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THE OLD TESTAMENT 
IN THE Light of To-day 



THE OLD TESTAMENT 

IN THE 
LIGHT OF TO-DAY 

A STUDY IN MORAL DEVELOPMENT 



BY 

WILLIAM FREDERIC BADE 

Professor on the Frederick Billings Foundation 

for Old Testament Literature and Semitic Languages 

Pacifc Theological Seminary 

Berkeley^ California 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 



v'^^ 

<- 



COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY WILLIAM FREDERIC BADE 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published November iQis 




CI.A4147I0 



INSCRIBED TO 
THE MEMORY OF MY WIFE 

EVELYN MARY 



JVe came to know 
The master-lesson and the riddW s key: 
Unending love unending growth shall be 



PREFACE 

The one thing of supreme importance in the Old 
Testament, actually and historically, is the idea of 
God — the focal point of its significance for humanity. 
That idea did not come in full feather, nor fall as a bolt 
from the blue. In a long history of progress, it presents 
the necessity of choice between the higher and the 
lower, the better and the worse. The advance of Bib- 
lical scholarship, and the change from an instructional 
to an educational view of revelation, have made the 
choice easier, so that a rich heritage need no longer 
prove a poor possession. The helpful teacher of the 
Old Testament now employs the higher achievements 
of Israel's religion as grave-diggers for the defunct 
moral crudities that have dropped by the way. The 
usual procedure has been to embalm them with a 
**Thus saith the Lord," and to carry them along until 
the living expire under the dead. 

I cherish the modest hope that this book may help 
students and teachers of the Old Testament to find a 
new and securer place for it in the religious thought of 
our time. Although it embodies results of ten years of 
special study and practical experience in teaching, it 
still falls so far short of its simple purpose that I shall 
be the last to consider it blamed unduly if it meets 
with evil as well as good report. 



viii PREFACE 

The first draft of its contents was delivered eight 
years ago, at the Berkeley Summer School of Religion, 
as a series of lectures under the title, *' The Idea of God 
in the Old Testament." Since then the scope of the 
book has been greatly amplified. If it comes as a tardy 
fulfilment of the expectations of my students and 
friends, I hope the maturer work which it embodies 
will prove a partial compensation for the delay. 

It has been my constant endeavor to meet, as un- 
technically as possible, the difficulties of men and 
women to whom the Old Testament is still a valuable 
part of the Bible, but who find it an indigestible ele- 
ment in the Biblical rationale of their beliefs. In my own 
case, as in that of others who were brought up under 
the traditional view of the Scriptures, a frank evalua- 
tion of the morals of the Old Testament in the light of 
historical criticism has proved the only effective solv- 
ent. For this reason I have not been content merely to 
record facts, but have applied to them the moral judg- 
ments which lie impHcit in the thought of moral prog- 
ress. Not to make within the Bible those moral dis- 
tinctions by which men now live their daily lives, is to 
cut it off from further participation in the vital con- 
cerns of mankind. 

I have tried to keep the footnotes within as small a 
compass as possible, and yet to give the most essential 
evidence and references to literature. H. P. Smith's 
Religion of Israel^ and J. P. Peters's Religion of the 
Hebrews J did not appear in time to be included among 



PREFACE 



IX 



the citations of literature. A selected bibliography 
covering the entire field of my investigations is in con- 
templation for the second volume. My original plan, 
to cover the whole period of Hebrew religious develop- 
ment in one volume, had to be abandoned in the in- 
terest of a fuller and more adequate treatment. The 
exilic and post-exilic period will, therefore, be treated 
separately. 

More than ordinary attention has been devoted In 
this volume to a study of the decalogue. A first draft 
of my tentative conclusions was published in the Uni- 
versity of California Chronicle, a little over a year ago, 
under the title, ''The Decalogue a Problem in Ethical 
Development." Reprints of the article were sent to 
Old Testament scholars In all parts of the world with a 
request for an expression of opinion. There was a most 
generous response, which might have been even more 
complete had it not been for the outbreak of the great 
European war. The chapter on the decalogue has 
been rewritten and amplified In the light of this cor- 
respondence. 

Now that a part, at least, of my task Is completed, 
my grateful acknowledgments are due to John Wells 
Morss, of Boston, whose more than friendly interest 
and encouragement have been unfailing; to my col- 
leagues. President Charles Sumner Nash and John 
Wright Buckham, for wise counsel which has ever 
been at my service; to Karl Marti, of the University 
of Berne, for many helpful suggestions; to Charles F. 



X PREFACE 

Aked, Winston Churchill, and Charles Mills Gayley, 
for the advantage derived from friendly discussions 
of problems broached in my study ; and to Miss Clara 
Lyford Smith for valuable suggestions in the last stages 
of my manuscript, for a verification of the Scripture ref- 
erences, and for the preparation of an index. 

I feel prompted, also, to acknowledge a long-standing 
debt of gratitude to my former teachers at Yale: Pro- 
fessor Frank C. Porter, Frank Knight Sanders, and 
Edward L. Curtis. The last-named has passed on, but 
his well-remembered kindnesses and the charm of his 
spirit abide. 

To her whose pure and radiant self is wrought into 
all this book contains of strength and truth and hope, I 
dedicate it with infinite regret that she was not des- 
tined to see finished what we planned together. 

William Frederic Bad]§:. 

Berkeley, California, 
June, 1 91 5. 



CONTENTS 

Introduction 

Two views of the Old Testament still contending for 
mastery — Source of disorder in religious education — 
Fact of moral growth must be admitted — Relation be- 
tween general culture and religion — What moral develop- 
ment implies — Task of determining chronological order 
of materials for study — Literary chronology of the Old 
Testament . . xv 



List of Abbreviations 



CHAPTER I 

The Old Testament under Sentence of Life 

Proposals to eliminate it from religious education — 
Retention desirable, but conditioned on a different use — 
Implied recognition of religious evolution in the Bible — 
Explicitly recognized by Jesus — His moral criticism of the 
Old Testament — Moral vision of his followers obscured by 
letter-worship — Historical criticism demands moral criti- 
cism — Need of a new conception of revelation — Response 
to the demands of a new world-view — Not faith itself, but 
mistaken reasons for faith under review ..... 3 

CHAPTER II 

Moral Beginnings of Hebrew Religion 

No direct sources from the time of Moses — Adapta- 
tion and expurgation of traditions — Indirect testimony of 
the sources — Criterion afforded by antagonism between 
Bedawin and Fellahin — Characteristics of Bedawin — 
Of Half-nomads — Of Fellahin — Nomadic survivals in 
Israel's religion — Ritual and institutional survivals — 
Nomadic reactions against agriculture — Surviving effects 
of primitive social institutions — Blood-revenge, marriage, 
concubinage, slavery 18 



xii CONTENTS 

CHAPTER III 

Moral Character of Jahveh and his Clients in the 
Early Literature 

Character of the sources — Political origin of ideas about 
Jahveh — His local and intramundane character — Expla- 
nation of his extra-Palestinian appearances — Tomb versus 
Sheol — Evidence of Jahveh's fixedness — Resulting lim- 
itations — Distrust of his purposes — His irascibility — 
Attitude toward non-Israelites — Moral obligations bind- 
ing only between countrymen — Current Israelite practice 
invested with divine sanction — Covenant idea and impli- 
cations — Involves obligation to observe taboos — Im- 
moral beliefs and consequences 54 

CHAPTER IV 

Origin and Moral Significance of the Decalogue 

Result of a long development — Two different deca- 
logues — Relative antiquity of ritual and standard deca- 
logues — Variant forms of standard decalogue — Ad- 
dressed to men only — To be observed only by He- 
brews — Discussion of individual precepts — Question 
about the third commandment — Ancient Sabbath a full- 
moon festival? — Parents and children — Origin of dual 
standard of sex morality — Summary — Morality by com- 
mand an immoral theory — Divine legislation through 
human sense of right 87 

CHAPTER V 

Pioneers of a New Era: Amos of Tekoa and Hosea ben- 
Beeri 

Greatness of Amos — Review of earlier beliefs — De- 
clares inseparability of religion and morality — Denuncia- 
tion of the cultus — New ideas of right and wrong — Not 
a monotheist — Only material benefits expected of religion 
— Comparison of pre-exilic and N. T. beliefs — Idea of 
retribution — Similarity of Hosea's message — Empha- 
sizes love; Amos, justice — Also attacks the cultus — 
Prophet versus priest — Lights and shadows of his message 132 



CONTENTS xiii 

CHAPTER VI 

The Prophet of Holiness: Isaiah ben-Amoz 

Isaiah's many-sided greatness — Statesman, reformer, 
poet, theologian — Prophetism and its changing ideas of 
revelation — Possession- theory and ecstatic prophetism — 
Heason and reflection as channels of revelation — Charac- 
ter versus ceremonial — "Holy through righteousness" — 
The "glory" of Jahveh — New grandeur impressed upon 
the idea of God — Counsels of trust — Unsparingly de- 
nounces the sacrificial ritual 167 



CHAPTER VII 

The Monojahvism of Deuteronomy 

Deuteronomy not monotheistic — Alternation of Jahveh 
and Baal worship unhistorical — Coalescence, instead, of 
Canaanite and Hebrew religion — Term "baal" applied 
to Jahveh — Cultus attacked as Canaanite by the prophets 
— Worst features of Jahveh-Baal worship proscribed — 
The ark ignored — Evidence of many local Jahvehs — 
Diverse influences behind Deuteronomic reform — Moral 
versus ritual reform — One Jahveh, one sanctuary — 
Monojahvism not monotheism — Jahveh's supremacy — 
Summary . 187 



CHAPTER VIII 

The Social Ethics of Deuteronomy 

Prophets' relation to the ethics of D — Slavery counte- 
nanced — Its abuses mitigated for Hebrews only — Dis- 
criminations against clients and aliens — Discriminatory 
regulations about debts — Effect of national-god-idea upon 
sense of moral obligation — Preferential treatment of 
specified races — Feuds bequeathed — Ammonites, Moab- 
ites, Amalekites — Deuteronomic exclusivism — Humani- 
zation of earlier laws — Stepmother-marriage — Widows 
are victims of innovations — Social ethics evaluated by 
death-penalties — Effect of making idolatry a capital 
offence — Holiness or taboo 218 



XIV CONTENTS 

CHAPTER IX 

The First Great Heretic: Jeremiah of Anathoth 

Some facts of personal history — Probably not a sup- 
porter of Deuteronomy — Opposes its misuse by the in- 
violability party — Champions reform of character against 
reform of ritual — The temple no palladium — Shiloh : an 
appeal to history — False criterion for judging prophets — 
Issue between dogma and ethics — Jeremiah denies Mosaic 
origin of sacrifice — An ethical monotheist — Implicitly an 
individualist — The new covenant 258 

CHAPTER X 

The Repudiation of Ritual Religion by the Pre-Exilic 
Prophets 

Repudiation of sacrifice the distinction of Israel's reli- 
gion — Calling the witnesses — Distortion of their testi- 
mony by later editors — Protest of a Psalmist — Atone- 
ment by sacrifice a priestly doctrine — Prophets tolerate 
sacrificial system for its social uses — Abuses of the system 
— Deuteronomic sacrifice accords with prophetic ideas — 
Exploitation of Deuteronomic regulations by the Jerusa- 
lemite priesthood — Misdevelopment inaugurated by Eze- 
kiel^ — Conclusion 281 

Appendix 

A. "Jehovah" and "Jahveh" 313 

B. Duhm on Jer. 8 : 8 315 

Index of Scripture Citations 321 

Index of Subjects 323 



INTRODUCTION 

Two views of the Old Testament still contend for 
mastery among the adherents of Christianity. The one 
regards it as a sort of talisman, miraculously given and 
divinely authoritative on the subject of God, religion, 
and morals, in every part. The other regards it as a 
growth, in which the moral sanctions of each stage of 
development were succeeded and displaced by the 
next higher one. 

A former generation called into question chiefly the 
historical difficulties presented by the traditional view. 
The present generation is troubled by the crudity of 
its moral implications, and by what Matthew Arnold 
rather severely characterized as "its insane license of 
affirmation about God/' Even the late Henry Drum- 
mond, who came close to the thinking youth of his day, 
observed that the difficulty which young men had in 
accepting the Old Testament was no longer intellec- 
tual, but moral. 

Under the traditional scheme of the Bible its moral 
content is all of one piece. To quote one of its defend- 
ers, "The Bible itself knows of but one kind of inspira- 
tion, and that is an inspiration which extends to every 
chapter, verse, word, and syllable of the original 
Scriptures, using the mind and mouth, the heart and 
hand of the writers, guiding them in the least particu- 



XVI INTRODUCTION 

lar, guarding them against the least blunder, and mak- 
ing their utterance the very word of God to our souls. 
. . . The Scripture and the entire Scripture, claims 
to be, and is in fact, altogether exempt from errors 
or mistakes of any sort."^ 

A certain well-known Bible Institute, recently in- 
corporated under the laws of California, contains 
the following item in its statement of doctrine: ''The 
Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are without 
error or misstatement in their moral and spiritual 
teachings and record of historical facts. They are with- 
out error or defect of any kind." To this statement of 
belief "every officer, teacher, and worker must sub- 
scribe once a year," and "failure to insist upon the pro- 
mulgation of these doctrines . . . constitutes ground 
for suit for the reversion of money contributed for the 
erection of the building and the return of same to the 
original donors or their heirs." 

While he believes with the same intensity in the 
high mission of the Bible, the modern historical student 
cannot subscribe to any such view of its contents. 
He feels called of God to start with the facts, not 
with a dogma. Where the traditionalist sees one un- 
broken plain of heaven-descended perfect morality, the 
thoughtful man of to-day finds "a land of hills and 
valleys," as the Deuteronomist said of Palestine. It is 
one thing to have a strong faith in the inspiration of 
the Bible ; quite another, to make it serve in the place 
1 J. H. Brookes, Anti-Higher Criticism, p. 334. 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

of man's equally God-given intelligence. Jesus taught, 
and human history illustrates, the fact that men must 
struggle for the truths which they hope to possess. 
This was as true of the Israelites as of those who study 
the record of their struggle to-day. Refusal to recognize 
the obvious stages of moral progress by which Israel, 
under divine guidance, wrought out its high destiny, is 
not only to rob the Old Testament of its human in- 
terest and dramatic appeal, but to make it a serious 
stumbling-block to those who need its passion for 
righteousness in their own lives. 

The real source of disorder in our religious education 
is this artificial doctrinal coordination of different 
stages of moral development, contained within the 
Bible. For while in most universities and theological 
seminaries the substance and spirit of Old Testament 
scholarship find expression in terms adequate to the 
intelligence and needs of our time, the great mass of 
religious instruction outside exhibits little more than 
forced accommodation to the new standards. The re- 
sult is moral confusion, anguish of soul, and ultimate 
indifiference. Granting that distinctions of fact under- 
lie distinctions of worth, it scarcely is necessary to en- 
large upon the viciousness of a method that ignores not 
only stages of religious development within the Old 
Testament, but loses sight also of essential differences 
between the Old and the New. 

Until a substantial moral inequality between the Old 
and the New Testament is recognized in Biblical in- 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

struction, the student will have difficulty in seeing that 
the former is developmentally as well as historically 
subordinate to the latter. The differences between suc- 
cessive periods of Old Testament religion, and between 
the Old Testament as a whole and the New Testament 
as a whole, are differences of growth, and consequently 
of moral authoritativeness. With respect to much in 
Hebrew religion the student has done his full duty 
when he has traced its origin and assigned it a place in 
the development of human thought. There are intel- 
lectual conceptions, moral ideals, motives, and rites, 
which, in spite of their divine sanctions, have fortu- 
nately forever fallen below our moral horizon. With re- 
spect to still other areas of Old Testament thought, his- 
torical study will leave men disinclined to attempt any 
spiritual appropriation of what belongs so completely 
to the past. The process of discrimination involved in 
such study will free them from the false obligation to 
justify the unjustifiable, and in the language of Job, to 
"speak unrighteously for God." Their moral no less 
than their intellectual difficulties with the Bible will 
vanish in direct proportion to their willingness to make 
room for the cancellations of development in matters re- 
ligious as well as scientific. 

For a just appreciation of the facts of moral develop- 
ment in Hebrew religion, it is necessary to realize at the 
outset that religion and general culture were practi- 
cally inseparable in antiquity. In their reactions upon 
each other this is true to-day. But the further one goes 



INTRODUCTION xix 

back into the beginnings of human history, the more 
the different forms of authority which regulate men's 
actions are seen to merge into one. What we now call 
morals is in the earliest times represented by a body of 
tribal customs rigidly enforced upon all members of the 
community by discipline and habit. What we now call 
civil law is represented by a series of prohibitions and 
punishments unsparingly enforced by all members of 
the tribe upon the refractory. What we now call 
science is represented by a series of myths and legends, 
giving supernatural reasons for tribal customs and the 
fierceness with which any infractions of those customs 
were to be punished. What we now call religion was a 
part of all three sets of facts, and its chief practical 
manifestation was a disposition to provide existing 
practices with divine sanctions. Since religion in prim- 
itive times was not a body of abstract beliefs, but con- 
cretely a part of almost all that we would class as gen- 
eral culture in the form of tribal institutions and 
customs, and since primitive culture undeniably has, 
by a long process of evolution, developed into modern 
civilization, it follows inevitably that religion has 
shared with civilization this process of progressive 
development. It passed by stages from the crudest 
expressions of the religious instinct, in nature, ances- 
tor, and fetish worship, to the exalted form in which 
it has expressed itself in the teachings of Jesus. 

When, therefore, we speak of the development of 
morals and religion, or of the moral content of religion. 



XX INTRODUCTION 

we are using an elliptical term and really mean the 
development of the morally religious man. The truth 
of this is obvious, and it implies that the development 
of the morally religious man is at the same time the 
development of the rational man, the artistic man, the 
civilized man. No less is the history of moral ideals in 
Hebrew religion a history of human growth, which ex- 
hibits on the one hand a process in man ; on the other, 
a progress in idea and institution. The process is the 
growing fitness of the vehicle of revelation. The prog- 
ress is the growing moral perfection of the religion. 
Needless to say, the conception of revelation that un- 
derlies this study regards it as an illumination from 
within, not as a communication from without; as an 
educative, not as an instructional, process. 

The materials which must form the basis of our 
study lie embedded in the literature of the Old Testa- 
ment. They are in the form of religious ideas, hopes, 
and rites, set forth in terms of Hebrew history, life, and 
institutions. This mass of ideas cannot, of course, be 
reduced to a systematic theology such as was formerly 
in fashion. One can trace the course of a river, but one 
may not treat it as a lake. So the religious progress of 
Israel may be traced like a river through the highlands 
and lowlands of Israel's literature. It may be described 
in order, but not set forth systematically as a unified 
theology. Obviously we must know the historical 
sequence in which that literature grew up, and the 
political and cultural environment which determined 
its changing social ideals, for 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

". . . every fiery prophet of old time, 
And all the sacred madness of the bard, 
When God made music through them, could but speak 
His music by the framework and the chord." 

An enormous amount of critical acumen has been 
expended upon the Hterary analysis of the writings 
of the Old Testament with a view to determining the 
age, or relative chronology, of its several parts. That 
task may now be said to be accomplished; for the un- 
certainties that remain do not affect large issues. As a 
result of this analysis, verified by linguistics, by the 
history of laws and institutions, by the testimony of 
the monuments, and by our knowledge of the history 
of contemporary nations, the actual and approximate 
dates of the various books, and of literary strata within 
composite books, of the Old Testament, are now known 
with a remarkable degree of precision. This knowledge 
naturally has become the basis for a reinterpretation of 
Hebrew morals and religion in terms of development. 
It is unfortunate that the Psalms cannot be used with 
the same assurance as other parts of the Old Testa- 
ment. Their individual dates are on the whole quite 
uncertain, and the evidence of religious experience, or 
doctrine, which they contain must, therefore, be ad- 
duced as auxiliary, rather than as fundamental. The 
reader may occasionally find advantage in getting his 
chronological bearings by reference to the following 
table. No attempt has been made to give analytical 
details. These will be found in various modem trea- 
tises on Old Testament Introduction. 



xxii INTRODUCTION 

Literary Chronology of the Old Testament 

B.C. 

Moses (no authentic literary remains) c. 1 300-1 200 

Early traditions and songs 1200-1000 

*J Document (Jahvist). Materials scattered 

through the Pentateuch and Joshua 850 

*E Document (Elohist). Materials scattered 

through the Pentateuch and Joshua f 750 

Amos and Rosea 750- 735 

Isaiah (authentic materials in chaps. 1-39) 740- 700 

Micah, chaps. 1-3 725- 690 

J and E compiled into a single document c. 650 

Nahum c. 650 

Zephaniah c. 630 

* Deuteronomy (D) written about 650, published . . f 62 1 
Jeremiah (a great part consisting of later addi- 
tions) 626- 586 

Habakkuk c. 600 

Babylonian Exile 597- 538 

Ezekiel 592- 570 

Lamentations 586 

Historical books up to Kings edited in the spirit 

of Deuteronomy 600- 570 

JE combined with D c. 560 

Deutero-Isaiah (Isaiah, chaps. 40-55) c. 540 

Haggai and Zechariah 520 

Trito-Isaiah (Isaiah, chaps. 56-66), mostly 500- 460 

Job (containing later additions) c. 450 or later 

Psalms (collected, edited, in large part composed).. 520- 150 

* Priests' Code (P), Leviticus, etc 550-t 450 

Malachi, Ruth, Joel, Jonah, Obadiah 460- 350 

Pentateuch completed (JEDP) by addition of P. . c. 420 

Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah 350- 250 

Song of Songs c. 350 

Book of Proverbs (containing older materials) 300 ^ 

Ecclesiastes c. 250 

Daniel c. 165 

Esther c. 150 

c. circa, about. • Principal documents. t Legal codes. 



THE OLD TESTAMENT 
IN THE Light of To-day 



LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 

AJSL = American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literature. 
AJT = American Journal of Theology. 
AOTB = Altorientalische Texte und Bilder. 

AS = Alttestamentliche Studien. 
HSAT = Heilige Schrift des Alten Testaments. 
JBL = Journal of Biblical Literature. 

LXX = The Septuagint, or Greek Version of the Old Testament. 
OTSS = Old Testament and Semitic Studies. 
PSBA = Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology. 
RGG = Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart. 
SBOT = Sacred Books of the Old Testament (Polychrome). 
ThSK = Theologische Studien und Kritiken. 
ZAW = Zeitschrift fiir die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft. 



THE OLD TESTAMENT 
IN THE LIGHT OF TO-DAY 

CHAPTER I 

THE OLD TESTAMENT UNDER SENTENCE OF LIFE 

During the past generation there have been numer- 
ous proposals to eliminate the Old Testament from the 
religious education of the young. It is one of the ways 
in which the modern defection from traditionalism and 
authority in religion has manifested itself. The reasons 
most commonly urged for this step have been the fol- 
lowing: — 

1. That Christianity has no exclusive connection 
with Israelitish history and with Judaism. That the 
Jewish descent of Jesus in no way proves the depend- 
ence of the New Testament upon the Old. That in the 
realm of thought, Christianity was something entirely 
new and independent, having been prepared for quite 
as much by the great thinkers of Greece, Rome, and 
the non-Semitic Orient, as by the Hebrew prophets. 
That therefore it is both needless and useless to educate 
our youth into Christianity by the roundabout way of 
the Old Testament. That PauFs address at Athens, 
spoken to hearers who were not Jews, blazed the way 
for a more direct approach to the desired end. 

2. That there is an element of danger in obliging the 



4 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

youth of our day to hold ideal Intercourse with men 
and women whose attitude toward life was totally dif- 
ferent from ours, and whose social ethics stood upon a 
moral plane far beneath that of our time. That even 
the most persistent and violent exegetical and homi- 
letical torture cannot make the Old Testament stories 
confess to moral standards which their writers did not 
know. That, in any case, it is mischievous to mingle 
without discrimination material from the Old and New 
Testaments because serious confusion of moral stand- 
ards in the mind of the student is liable to ensue. 

Let us concede at once that there is much truth in 
these objections. But they also contain a subtle ad- 
mixture of error. It is true that we have ceased to re- 
gard the Old Testament as the only source of New 
Testament Christianity. Many other currents of 
thought and history have poured their contents into 
its channel. It is true that a considerable part of the 
Hebrew Scriptures, as will be seen, has not only ceased 
to exert a positive influence upon Christian thought, 
but is fraught with harm where it is set forth as pos- 
sessing, or ever having possessed, divine sanction. In 
its fundamental conception of divine requirements the 
legal religion of the Old Testament is irreconcilably 
at variance with that of the pre-exilic prophets. The 
priestly ritual of Leviticus has no more right to be 
heard upon the moral questions of our age than the 
book of Esther, whose ethical standards are con- 
demned outright by the teaching of Jesus. 



UNDER SENTENCE OF LIFE 5 

But when these and similar deductions have been 
made, the fact remains that the Old Testament is the 
best introduction to the New. Christian doctrines can 
be fully understood and fairly judged only when seen 
in their historical perspective, and the Old Testament 
alone enables us to trace their origin and growth. In 
order to furnish this approach, however, the Old Testa- 
ment cannot be used as a fixed body of truth standing 
beside the New Testament. It is the record of a moral 
struggle that lies behind the teaching of Jesus and the 
apostles, and even in its best parts it rarely rose above 
transient statements of moral truths and principles. 
The doctrinal coordination of the Old and New Testa- 
ments which still holds the ground in popular religious 
education, is the real grievance of objectors to the Old 
Testament. But their proffered remedy, to drop the 
Old Testament out of religious education, is worse 
than the disorder. It would break the bond of histori- 
cal continuity. Doctrinal coordination should give 
place to historical subordination in which the principle 
of development, ''first the blade, then the ear, then the 
full grain in the ear," receives adequate recognition. 
With the adoption of this attitude toward the Bible as 
a whole, and the Old Testament in particular, the ob- 
jections mentioned above are vacated. For the harm 
lies not in dealing with imperfect moral standards^ but in 
failure to recognize them as imperfect. 

It would be both unscientific and unreasonable to 
expect on the part of Israel's religious leaders know!- 



6 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

edge of the laws of evolution in advance of man's sci- 
entific study of the facts of nature and of life. It does 
not seem to be God's way anywhere to endow men 
miraculously with information which the exercise of 
faculties he has given them is sufficient to secure. 
Still, the fact that religion has shared with other inter- 
ests of the human spirit the struggle from lower to 
higher levels did not altogether escape the attention 
of Biblical writers. 

The unknown author of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
declared that " God, having of old time spoken unto the 
fathers in the prophets, in many fragments and in 
many fashions, hath at the end of these days spoken 
unto us in his Son." What is fragmentary is not per- 
fect. What is varied in fashion is not the result of di- 
vine experiment, but expresses the diversified abilities 
of God's spokesmen in different times and different 
cultural environments. They differed among them- 
selves because each man had to answer according to his 
ability the particular questions which his own times 
were putting. The statement implies a progressive rev- 
elation, the growth of the knowledge of God among 
men. 

The example and the teaching of the Christ deter- 
mined the moral level upon which the gains of the fu- 
ture were to be made. The founders of Christianity 
recognized in his coming the culmination of the his- 
torical process, but not its ending. The writer of the 
Gospel of John was far along upon the stream of events, 



UNDER SENTENCE OF LIFE 7 

but he still saw it flowing directly out of the thought 
of Jesus, for he attributed to him the statement: "I 
have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot 
bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, 
is come, he will guide you into all truth." There were 
human limits to a divine revelation, and the barriers 
were destined to fall only before the larger knowledge 
that answers a deeper need. Nineteen centuries of 
Christian thought and experience have become tribu- 
tary to this ampler knowledge of God, and still the 
stream is widening on its way through broader valleys 
of human experience. 

A study of what are held to be genuine sayings of 
Jesus shows that he regarded the Jewish Scriptures of 
his time as a preparation for himself. In other words, 
they were transitory in relation to himself — subject 
to the cancellations of development. New Testament 
scholars are beginning to doubt the genuineness of the 
saying: "Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or 
one tittle shall in no wise pass from the Law until all be 
accomplished." It is in flat contradiction with the gen- 
eral tenor of Jesus' teaching. But even if it were ac- 
cepted, it would have to be read in the light of his 
definition of what he meant by the Law, as when he 
said: *' Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto 
you, even so do ye also unto them : for this is the Law 
and the Prophets." Again: "Thou shalt love the Lord 
thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and 
Y^ith all thy strength, and with all thy mind, and thy 



8 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments the 
whole Law hangeth, and the Prophets." Reference to 
the chapter entitled *'The Social Ethics of Deuter- 
onomy" will show how little the real Law had in com- 
mon with this lofty evaluation of its essence. It was 
a virtual rejection, as wrong or irrelevant, of more 
than seventy-five per cent of what the Jewish doctors 
understood by the Law. In the face of such a fact 
it is superfluous to inquire what becomes of the jot and 
the tittle of ritual punctiliousness, or of that Bible 
letter-worship in the interest of which the passage is 
often quoted. 

There were other occasions on which Jesus rejected 
parts of the Law. Some of its precepts He interpreted 
far beyond their literal and original meaning, in order 
to bring them up to his loftier moral standard. And 
there were times when he directed his conduct in su- 
perb indifference to its most explicit demands. He 
abrogated the commandment '*an eye for an eye and 
a tooth for a tooth." In substituting unqualified non- 
resistance and forgiveness he was replacing revenge 
with redemptive justice, which differs more in kind 
than in degree. When he declared that the Sabbath 
was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath, he 
disavowed what was most characteristic in the Old 
Testament conception of the Sabbath. In regard to 
divorce, he boldly challenged the provision of the 
Mosaic Law, saying that it was a half-measure accom- 
modated to the moral capacity of the people; that it 



UNDER SENTENCE OF LIFE 9 

could not claim to be an expression of the will of God, 
— and this notwithstanding the fact that it is found 
among precepts for which Deuteronomy claims divine 
authority. 

Finally, nothing could be more revolutionary than 
his opposition to the cleansing ordinances of the Law, 
when he declared, ''There is nothing from without the 
man, that going into him can defile him." ^ This state- 
ment strikes hard at the regulations of ritual purity 
that form so large a part of the priestly religion of the 
Old Testament. It is not surprising that One who 
maintained such utter moral independence of the 
Mosaic Law should on one occasion have ascribed the 
character of transitoriness to the entire Scriptures of 
his time: "The Law and the Prophets were until John: 
from that time the gospel of the kingdom of God is 
preached." ^ The occasional obedience which the sy- 
noptic tradition reports him to have rendered to some 
formal rules, must be accounted for on the ground of 
expediency, not of principle. Since expediency derives 
its warrant from circumstances, it is relative and tran- 
sient, and must alter with changes of time and place. 

The liberty and duty of moral criticism of the Old 
Testament, therefore, has been bequeathed to the 
Church by Jesus himself. By his supreme indifference 
to many observances of the Old Testament, by his de- 
liberate transgression of others, by his criticism of its 
ethics and morality as inadequate, by his recognition 

* Mark 7: 15. 2 L^ke 16: 16. 



10 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

of its transitory character, as also by his failure to be- 
queath commands about circumcision, sacrifice, or 
temple- worship, Jesus inaugurated that higher life of 
the spirit to which the Old Testament could serve only 
as a stepping-stone. To the assumption and exhibi- 
tion of the idea of development, as applied to the Old 
Testament, we, therefore, have a right to add its as- 
sertion by One who could correct with final principles 
what "was said to them of old time." It should be 
noted, however, that his denial of finality to the Old 
Testament was combined with an attitude of reverence 
toward it as the record of a splendid struggle after 
God which he had come to fulfil. He looked not back 
but forward, and putting his hand to the plough, 
drove it deep through the hardened crust of barren 
tradition, and placed the Old Testament under sen- 
tence of life. 

Passing to the apostles one finds, strangely enough, 
that they narrowed the scope of criticism, if they did 
not deny it altogether. They apparently accepted the 
moral criticism applied to the Old Testament by Jesus, 
but they also believed in the literal inspiration of the 
text. A thorough comprehension and acceptance of 
Jesus* principles would have prevented the apostles 
from binding themselves and their converts once more 
to the letter of the Jewish Scriptures. They did not, 
could not, fully comprehend. They accepted their 
Master's moral appraisal of Old Testament teaching 
and institutions, but with it accepted also the rigid 



UNDER SENTENCE OF LIFE ii 

letter-worship of the Jewish doctors of their time. 
Two things so absolutely at variance with each other 
could not long coexist without conflict. So it came 
about that what at first tended to silence critical in- 
quiry eventually raised critical questions even more 
acute than those of the Old Testament itself. The 
moral criticism applied to the Old Testament by Jesus 
implies our right to employ textual, historical, and 
philosophical criticism. On the other hand, modern 
historical criticism of the Old Testament has furnished 
new warrant for his moral criticism, by relegating to 
the realm of historical fiction many a story and incident 
formerly quoted by literalists in support of ethically 
questionable doctrines and beliefs. 

The Old Testament, no less than the New, contains 
a record of religious experience. Men have called it a 
revelation. It will be apparent that under a modern 
world-view, and in the light of the considerations ad- 
duced above, the word "revelation" requires a new 
interpretation. There is no authoritative definition 
of the word by the Church. Were we to follow John 
Stuart Mill's prescription for such cases our definition 
ought to come at the end and not at the beginning of 
our study. Bishop Butler's observation, that men are 
not competent judges beforehand of what may be ex- 
pected in the content of a revelation, applies equally to 
the method of revelation. Considerable light will be 
thrown upon the method of revelation in the course of 
our discussions, especially in the chapter on Isaiah, 



12 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

though this is not the end toward which the work is 
directed. But there are reasons why it is desirable to 
come to an understanding at this point concerning the 
meaning of a term which, for want of a less ambiguous 
substitute, we shall occasionally be forced to employ. 

The word "revelation " carries a fairly definite mean- 
ing in popular usage. According to this meaning, 
which formerly expressed accurately enough the pre- 
vailing thought, " Revelation is the communication to 
men, by some external agency, of truths which they 
could not arrive at by internal processes of their own 
minds." This, substantially, is Trench's definition in 
his ''Study of Words": '' God's revelation of himself 
is a drawing back of the veil or curtain which concealed 
him from men; not man finding out God, but God dis- 
covering himself to man." It is tantamount to saying, 
revelation is instruction, not education, or experience. 

Against the word ''revelation" so understood we 
wish to enter an early protest. Thoughtful men every- 
where are abandoning this old conception, which came 
in as a correlate to the transcendent idea of God, and 
to a world-view that has been outgrown. A God apart 
from the world was necessarily believed to reveal him- 
self from without, objectively ^ The older apologists 
also identified revelation with the entire contents of 
the Bible, sought external supports for revelation in 
miracle and prediction, and depreciated the function 
of reason as an organ of knowledge. This interpreta- 
tion of revelation in terms of information about ritual 



UNDER SENTENCE OF LIFE 13 

requirements, and relatively petty matters, by means 
of divination, dreams, and prediction, can no longer 
hold the attention of serious-minded men. It was part 
of a framework of thought about a world created by 
fiat, recent in origin, small in extent, corrupt in nature, 
degenerative in its history, and subject to miraculous 
interferences with its laws. 

It is a different world of thought in which men are 
now living. There are no limits to our universe, no 
anticipated end to its duration. It is ** dynamic in all 
its elements, law-abiding in all its forces and areas, de- 
veloping through an immanent process of evolution by 
resident forces, and moving on to a far-off divine event 
when the purposes of God will be realized in a per- 
fected humanity."^ The change from transcendence to 
immanence in our thought of God has involved the 
corresponding transition from an objective to a sub- 
jective theory of revelation. Hence for our time and for 
our purposes the word ^* revelation " is used to describe 
a process almost the reverse of what is commonly un- 
derstood by it. Not through the medium of external 
agencies, but in and through personality does God re- 
veal himself to men. The divine Reason within man 
*'is the candle of the Lord." Conscience and intellect 
are God's prophets to the soul. Formerly credited with 
a secondary, or even antagonistic, function, they are 
now seen to be of supreme importance. Hegel, with a 

* Daniel Evans, Divine Revelation and the Christian Religion. Dudleian 
Lecture, Harvard University, 19 12. 



14 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

close approximation to the Apostle Paul, said: "The 
spirit of man whereby he knows God is simply the 
Spirit of God himself." With less of Hegelian panthe- 
ism, John Caird writes: "Reason, following in the 
wake of faith, grasps the great conception that the re- 
ligious life is at once human and divine — the concep- 
tion that God is a self -revealing God, . . . and that the 
highest revelation cf God is the life of God in the soul 
of man." In the words of Daniel Evans, "The ulti- 
mate reality registers itself in the human consciousness. 
Revelation is not in the outer realm, but in the inner 
through the outer. . . . The religious progress of the 
race means an ever-deepening experience of the incom- 
ing of this divine reality into its life, an increasingly 
higher level of interests on which the divine and hu- 
man meet, a constantly growing spiritualization of 
the media through which the divine comes, and a pro- 
gressively larger interpretation of the meaning of this 
experience."^ Different thinkers state their view of 
the process somewhat differently, but they are agreed 
in saying that revelation is a divine illumination from 
within, and not a communication from without; that 
while the religious experience;^ which we call revelation 
may come in a great variety of forms, it must own 
brotherhood with other experiences, and come to the 
mind in conformity with the normal functioning of its 
powers. 

^ Daniel Evans, Divine Revelation and the Christian Religion. Dudleian 
Lecture, Harvard University, 1912. 



UNDER SENTENCE OF LIFE 15 

Did the limits which we have set ourselves for this 
discussion permit a further pursuit of this subject, it 
would be easy to show that this is precisely the view of 
revelation implied in the teaching of Jesus. Besides, it 
is the only theory that is compatible with unity, with 
continuity, and with the idea of development. What is 
still more striking, it will become perfectly clear in the 
course of our investigation that even the Old Testa- 
ment, though seemingly supporting the older, external 
view of revelation, implicitly compels us to aban- 
don the same. For again and again it will be found that 
the thing represented as an event, or phenomenon, in 
the natural world, was really in its origin an inner fact 
of consciousness, externalized and interpreted as a fact 
of the phenomenal world — an inevitable concession 
to primitive modes of thought and to the unconscious 
demand for concreteness during the earlier stages of 
religion. The voice in the garden, the divine visitors 
at Mamre, the burning bush, the physical manifesta- 
tions and thunderous deliverances on Mount Sinai, 
the tables of stone themselves, belong to the poetry, to 
^the religious psychology,' of Israel's religion, not to the 
historical facts of its history. As an incidental proof of 
this statement it may be remarked that in the course of 
centuries the content of prophetic preaching changed, 
and the prophets gradually modified their view of the 
manner in which God was thought to reveal his will 
to them. In other words, the Hebrew conception of 
revelation itself underwent a development which was 



i6 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

conditioned by the advance of Israel's culture. Discus- 
sion of details of this development will be more ap- 
propriate in connection with the work of Isaiah. 

That the laws which are found to have controlled the 
growth of Israel's moral and religious ideals are es- 
sentially the same as those with whose operation we 
are acquainted elsewhere should occasion no surprise. 
Just as the occurrence of some elements of the Mosaic 
Law in the Code of Hammurabi, older than Moses by a 
thousand years, shows that Hebrew codifiers founded 
their legislative system upon the proved experience of 
past generations, so the study of Semitic origins has 
shown that a number of religious practices and in- 
stitutions, once believed to be the peculiar possession 
of the Hebrews, were known and practised centuries 
before this gifted people made them a part of their 
own religious economy. It is precisely what our belief 
in the genetic unity of all religion, and in the continuity 
of its development, would lead us to expect. Nor does 
this fact furnish cause for fear lest the discovery of 
such genetic relationships undermine faith in the ob- 
jects of religion and in the reality of revelation. What 
it does undermine is a theqry of revelation which an 
appeal to the facts of experience does not sustain, and 
which in the interest of sound religious progress should 
no longer be suffered to go unchallenged. ^ 

It is a common observation that people will cling to 
a religious belief even though the reasons urged for it 
have been abandoned as unsound. It may be that the 



UNDER SENTENCE OF LIFE 17 

belief is true and that the real reasons for it are differ- 
ent from those which have been alleged. But while it is 
not logical to conclude that a belief cannot be true be- 
cause it has been believed for mistaken reasons, in 
actual experience distrust always spreads from the 
reasons to the belief. It will be seen that this is a fact 
of sinister aspect. The defence of truth by means of un- 
truth is one of the most serious obstacles which the 
Church of our day has to overcome. If the reason al- 
leged for one's faith is unreason to the common intelli- 
gence, or a denial of generally accepted facts, the cause 
of truth is served with something like the famous 
wooden horse which the Trojans dragged as a palladium 
into their city — to find it filled with enemies. 



CHAPTER II 

MORAL BEGINNINGS OF HEBREW RELIGION 

Contemporary literature is the only reliable source 
for the study of morals and religion in any age that is 
past. Inquiry for the religion of Moses, therefore, re- 
solves itself at once into the question whether we pos- 
sess authentic Mosaic documents, or even traditions 
of contemporary origin. Probably few Old Testament 
scholars would now venture to claim a genuinely Mo- 
saic origin for even the smallest literary fragments of 
the Pentateuch. It is quite unlikely, too, that any non- 
Mosaic traditions have come down unchanged from the 
time of the desert wanderings. Of Hebrew literature 
earlier than the ninth or tenth century B.C. only small 
fragments survive, and these are almost entirely in the 
form of songs. Such fragments are the Song of Deb- 
orah, in part; David's lament over Saul and Jonathan; 
the Song of the Well; parts of Jacob's Blessing; Jo- 
tham's Fable, and the speeches of Balaam. 
, If it is impossible to get back to the time of Moses by 
means of authentic writings, our historical information 
about the religion of the patriarchal period is even more 
nebulous, because it deals with a past still more remote. 
The fact is that the earliest cycles of tradition about 
the patriarchs, the exodus, and Moses were collected 
and edited for the first time during the ninth and 



MORAL BEGINNINGS 19 

eighth centuries B.C., about five hundred years after 
the time of Moses. The collection of traditions made in 
Judah is known as J; the one made in the north, in 
Ephraim, is designated by the symbol E, and their 
compilers are known as the Jahvist and Elohist respec- 
tively. Both exhibit to some extent the point of view 
of the earlier prophets and are, therefore, known as the 
prophetic documents. About 650 B.C. they were com- 
piled into a single document (JE) and suffered consider- 
ably in the process, from expurgation, editing, and 
harmonizing. A hundred years later they were sub- 
jected to a still more thorough revision at the hands of 
Deuteronomic editors. After two more centuries had 
rolled by they were incorporated into the framework 
of the Priests* Code, and received the most radical — 
perhaps one should say most distorting — revision of 
all. 

This obviously is an extremely condensed statement 
of the very complex literary history of the two earliest 
cycles of Hebrew tradition. Reference to the chrono- 
logical table in the Introduction will help to fix the 
relation of this history to the origin of other Old Tes- 
tament books. During the intervals between the succes- 
sive revisions new generations of prophets and religious 
leaders arose, delivered their messages, and departed; 
but not without contributing something to the cause of 
Israel's advancement in morals and religion. The vari- 
ous revisers of the old traditions sought to bring them 
up to date, to adapt them to the religious needs and 



20 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

understanding of their own times. This, be it observed, 
was done several times. 

The purpose of the redactors was laudable, but it 
has added greatly to the confusion and uncertainties 
that confront the student of the Old Testament. Does 
he want to find out what Moses said and believed? The 
earliest traditions about him were written down by men 
who lived half a millennium after his time. These col- 
lectors were no historians. The art of writing history, 
like every other art, was itself the product of subse- 
quent ages of growing culture. To what extent did 
they naively attribute to Abraham and Moses the re- 
ligious ideas of their own time? It is a deep-seated con- 
viction of Old Testament scholars that the JE tradi- 
tions are direct sources for the religion of Israel only 
as it was at the time of the writers and collectors. The 
next question is how much remains unaltered even of 
these traditions after so many successive editings? 
The answer may be found in most modern works on 
Old Testament Introduction, or in such a work as 
Kent's ''Student's Old Testament." Thanks to the 
method pursued by the ancient compilers it has been 
possible by careful critical analysis to identify exten- 
sive fragments of the JE traditions embedded in later 
compilations of the historical Old Testament books. 

During the oral transmission of traditions the adap- 
tive changes were made constantly and almost au- 
tomatically, for the folk-mind does not transmit 
anything that has ceased to reflect living interests. Fix- 



MORAL BEGINNINGS 21 

ation in writing stopped this process, except in so far as 
it was continued by editors and compilers. But even 
the work of selection and omission on the part of com- 
pilers becomes tendentious and interpretative. What 
was omitted probably was as important for our 
knowledge of the times as what was preserved. Indeed, 
the expurgations probably included the more valuable 
data regarding earlier times — motives, customs, ac- 
tions, beliefs that had grown out of joint with the na- 
tional hopes and religious feeling of a new age. We 
must be content to indicate here in only the briefest 
way what is meant. 

Two fragments of tradition, one that the ancient 
social-religious groups of shepherds, musicians, and 
smiths traced their descent through Lamech, and the 
other, that the giants whom the spies found in Pales- 
tine were the off-spring of angel marriages mentioned 
in the sixth chapter of Genesis, are of course irrecon- 
cilable with the tradition according to which Noah and 
his family were the only survivors of the flood. Yet 
the editors selected, expurgated, and harmonized these 
traditions into a superficial unity. But there remain 
these telltale chips from blocks of primitive tradition 
rejected by compilers. It was a compiler who identi- 
fied the Noah of the flood with the Noah of viticulture. 
In the original traditions they undoubtedly were two 
entirely different persons. The story of Cain and Abel 
is only a torso. Why did the compilers not preserve it 
in its original form? Was it Deuteronomic editors who 



22 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

suppressed the story of Shiloh's destruction? In Jere- 
miah's time it still was so well known that he could 
point a moral for his enemies with an allusion to the 
disaster. But not a word of it has come down to us in 
the historical books. These and many similar facts are 
significant. 

We have said that the fragmentary traditions of J 
and E can be used as direct sources only for the time 
when they were first fixed in writing. It would be 
more correct to say that they are direct sources of in- 
formation only for that side of their religion and tradi- 
tional history which the early bibliographers permit us 
to see. One scarcely dares to guess how important a 
part of the literary record is gone forever. 

But the extant traditions can fortunately be used as 
indirect sources of information about the religion and 
customs of Israel in pre-Davidic, and even pre-Mosaic 
times. It is a well-known fact, illustrated in the history 
of different- religions, that primitive conceptions of God 
and duty survive in their effects and often in their 
original form in later stages of religious development. 
We may feel certain that by the aid of such data, cor- 
roborated by evidence derived from the ideas of kindred 
peoples in similar political conditions, we can obtain at 
least inferential knowledge of Israel's moral beginnings 
before the time of Moses. 

Such sifting is delicate work and the conclusions 
which the investigator reaches cannot be advanced with 
the same assurance as when the testimony of the sources 



MORAL BEGINNINGS 23 

is direct. The most useful and reliable distinguishing 
mark between earlier and later elements of tradition 
in J and E is afforded by the unanimous testimony of 
Hebrew tradition that the Israelite tribes were nomads 
and half-nomads when they entered Palestine. Since 
cur sources belong to the period when the bulk of 
Israel's population dwelt in cities and pursued agri- 
cultural occupations, evidence of nomadic customs and 
points of view must be a survival from an earlier period. 
The line between nomadism and agriculture, between 
Bedawin and Fellahin, was sharply drawn in antiquity. 
They differed in social customs and in religion. No- 
mads scorned intermarriage with farmers and half- 
nomads, and there were never-ending feuds between 
them. What chiefly characterized the nomad was in- 
tense regard for the bonds of blood kinship, for the 
ceremonies and rights of hospitality, and a ruthless 
Ishmaelitism toward all strangers. The gradual transi- 
tion from the nomadic to the agricultural mode of life, 
and the profound changes which it entailed for the re- 
ligion of Israel, are discussed in a more appropriate 
connection in the chapter on *'The Monojahvism of 
Deuteronomy." We shall here consider established the 
conclusions set forth in that chapter. 

We shall have to pause a moment, however, to 
make sure that we are on the right road to the true 
meaning of early Hebrew institutions and beliefs. A 
modern explorer, faced with the same task in the case 
of a newly discovered tribe, or people, would immedi- 



24 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

ately proceed to acquaint himself with the social or- 
ganization in all its forms. Only by studying the ex- 
ternals of the life of man in society is it possible to get 
at the corresponding subjective states which we call 
beliefs. One must work up to the beliefs by way of the 
customs. 

Close scrutiny of the forms of social organization 
shows that physical necessity and intelligent purpose 
have been interpenetrating factors in their production. 
Besides, one must not overlook the fact that the physi- 
cal necessities which determine the desert nomad's life 
are different from those which enter into the life of any 
other kind of nomad. To ignore this fact is to confuse 
the truly unique Bedawin nomads with the pastoral 
nomads found in other parts of the world. The life 
of pastoral nomads corresponds more nearly to that 
of Semitic half-nomads. The Semitic desert nomads 
were a very different people. It is important, therefore, 
to consider at this point the leading social character- 
istics of the three classes of persons described as no- 
mads (Bedawin), half- nomads, and farmers (Fellahin). 

Bedawin or desert nomads. The Arabian and Syro- 
Arabian deserts still furnish examples of the pure 
Bedawi nomad. On the arid steppes over which he 
roams conditions of climate and country determine his 
mode of life as inevitably now as they did three thou- 
sand years ago. The camel is his chief, if not his only, 
dependence. Dates and camel's milk are his staple 
diet. Such were the nomads whom Schumacher en- 



MORAL BEGINNINGS 25 

countered in the region east of the Jordan and de- 
scribed as follows: ''The Bedawin distinguish sharply 
between Arab and Bedu. The former live partly in 
fixed abodes and incline toward agriculture. The lat- 
ter are the real inhabitants of the desert who regard the 
pursuit of agriculture as a disgrace. They breed only 
camels and live on dates and camel's milk. They 
scarcely know what bread is." Scarcity of water and 
pastures prevent the typical nomad from keeping 
donkeys, cattle, sheep, and goats. A good part of his 
living is obtained by raids into cultivated territory, 
and by the exaction of tribute from farmers, herds- 
men, and caravans.^ Under these conditions he must 
be prepared to move rapidly from place to place. The 
tent becomes his characteristic shelter and the camel 
his only reliance in forced marches between distant 
oases, or on marauding expeditions. 

Under the nomadic ideal of life the drinking of wine 
was strongly tabooed. Wine was an agricultural prod- 
uct whose uses and effects, unfamiliar to the Bedawin, 
excited their disgust. A native inscription on an altar 
erected by a Nabataean in Palmyra is dedicated to 
''The good and rewarding god who drinks no wine." ^ 
This agrees with the observation of Hieronymus of 
Cardia, made in 312 B.C., that the Nabataeans "live 

^ Egyptian inscriptions speak of "sand-dwellers," "sand-rovers," or 
simply of "robbers." Similarly the ideogram SA.GAZ of the Amarna 
letters, standing for a people no\V certainly identified with the Habiru, 
is rendered by habbatum, a "plunderer," "robber," or "nomad," Cf. 
Bohl, Kanaander u. Hebrder. 

* Littman, Journal Asiatique, ser. ix, vol. i8, p. 382 Jf. 



26 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

under the open sky . . . and it is a matter of law 
among them not to sow grain, nor to cultivate fruit- 
bearing plants, nor to drink wine, nor to build a 
house. Failure to conform to this law is punished with 
death." » 

Mohammed's imposition of entire abstinence from 
wine upon the adherents of Islam was probably the 
revival of an ancient and deep-seated Bedawi aver- 
sion, and not a reaction, as some have claimed, against 
Judaism and early Christianity. It is an act which 
must be judged in the light of general Semitic nomad 
customs and feeling. Sir Richard Burton, in describing 
his pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Mecca, observed 
that "in the Desert spirituous liquors excite only dis- 
gust." 

The following pertinent observations on nomadism 
and agriculture have been made by P. Antonin Jaus- 
sen, active for many years as missionary among the 
Arabs in the land of Moab : — 

''The distinction between fellah and bedawi is rigidly 
maintained among the tribes which we are discussing. 
The former is attached to the soil ; he plows it with his 
own hands, cultivates it, and watches over it; that is 
his occupation, his profession; he is an agriculturist. 
The bedawi, or inhabitant of the desert, does not put 
his hand to the plow; that is not work worthy of his 
person, nor of his independence. He pretends to be a 
free man, master of his movements, going and coming 
1 Diod. XIX, 94. 



MORAL BEGINNINGS 27 

after his manner on his noble courser. He conducts 
predatory raids and makes war; he raises herds of 
sheep, and especially of camels. As for driving ani- 
mals in harness along a furrow — he will not lower 
himself to that extent. Such is the Bedawin estimate 
of work in the fields. They regard it as employment 
fit for slaves, or for persons of inferior rank."^ 

There are marked characteristics which distinguish 
Semitic nomads in their social organization. The most 
salient fact about this social organization is its practi- 
cal identity with kinship organization. But kinship, as 
here used, must be distinguished from consanguinity. 
Under the latter reckoning a man's kin includes both 
his father's and his mother's people. But the type 
of kinship with which we are here dealing includes 
one side only — that of the father. The bonds of this 
patrilineal blood-kinship are very closely drawn, and 
the obligation of blood-feud for murderous attacks 
made by outsiders against a member of the kinship 
group are inescapable and inexorable. ''A Bedawi 
will take his blood-revenge after forty years," says an 
Arabic proverb. Although it was anciently customary 
to pay and accept a hundred camels in composition of a 
murder, it was considered more honorable not to ac- 
cept *'the price of blood," but to retaliate by taking 
the life of the murderer, or of one of his kinsmen. 
Among modern Bedawin the obligation to avenge a 
murder descends to the fifth generation, and the ^'debt 

* Coutumes des Arabes (1908), p. 240. 



28 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

of blood" is inherited by the murderer^s clan for the 
same number of generations. 

Among themselves the Bedawin are rigidly just and 
entertain romantic conceptions of honor. But any 
stranger may be ruthlessly robbed and slain if he has 
not been received as a guest or a client. ** If thou meet- 
est a stranger, strike him to the heart. If he were 
worth anything, he would have remained at home"; 
so runs another Arabic proverb. It is the counterpart 
of exiled Cain's complaint that whosoever finds him 
will slay him. In fact a man who had quit his clan and 
country was almost always one who had been ban- 
ished for a misdeed. 

We possess but scanty knowledge of the religion of 
the Bedawin of pre-Islamic Arabia. It is known, how- 
ever, that tree-worship existed among them. The 
tree-cult which survives in Syria and Arabia to the 
present day, therefore, originated in remote antiquity. 
The pre-Islamic goddess Uzzah, for instance, was 
worshipped in the form of three trees. 

But the most characteristic feature of the cultus of 
ancient Arabia was the worship of sacred stones. He- 
rodotus is our earliest witness for the Arab custom of 
establishing blood-brotherhood by smearing sacred 
stones with blood drawn from the hands of the con- 
tracting parties.^ Upright slabs of stone called nusuh, 
or mansab, formed an essential part of the religion of 
the Arabs. These steles evidently corresponded to the 

> Herodotus, iii, 3. 



MORAL BEGINNINGS 29 

Hebrew massebas, or pillars. They served as a kind of 
altar, and the blood of the sacrificial victim was 
smeared upon them. Like the Hebrews, the Arabs 
were accustomed to sacrifice the firstlings of their 
flocks and herds, and to pour the blood over sacred 
stones.^ The black stone in the wall of the Kaaba, 
adopted by Islam, is only a survival of numerous sa- 
cred stones of ancient Arabia that served as fetishes or 
dwelling places for a divine power. ^ 

Half-nomads. This term is not strictly accurate, but 
has been much used of late to describe classes of per- 
sons who occupy a transitional stage of development 
between pure nomadism and agriculture. They are 
chiefly shepherds and herdsmen who occasionally 
combine a little farming with their stock-breeding. 
They are found chiefly along the edges of the desert 
and cannot always be sharply distinguished from pure 
nomads, since they sometimes keep camels as well as 
cattle and sheep. The tradition which makes Jabal 
the "father of such as dwell in tents and have cattle" 
apparently saw in him the ancestor of nomads as well 
as of half-nomads. Failure to distinguish between 
the two may, indeed, indicate that the writer was 
acquainted only with half-nomads. 

The conditions of pasturage in many parts of Pales- 
tine were such that half -nomads, also, had to move 

* Cf . I Sam. 14: 32-35, where it is deemed a grievous thing to slaughter 
"on the ground," and "a great stone" is provided by Saul for the proper 
disposition of the blood. 

' Cf. Wellhausen, Reste arab, Heidentums, p. 102. 



30 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

from place to place. Since flocks and herds have to be 
watered every day, springs and wells were of supreme 
importance. Hebrew tradition pictures the patriarchs 
and the sons of Jacob as half -nomads. Abraham and 
Lot, Jacob and Laban, had their quarrels about pas- 
tures and watering-places. Certain pasture lands with 
their wells belonged to particular tribal groups, and 
compacts were made between neighboring clans to 
safeguard against encroachment upon each other's 
territory. As a rule half-nomads are disposed to yield a 
point in the interest of peace, for they hazard all their 
possessions in a feud. Hebrew tradition accords with 
this fact in that it represents the patriarchs as peace- 
loving men. 

For their living half-nomads, as a rule, were de- 
pendent upon the milk obtained from their sheep and 
goats. There was very little slaughtering of animals 
for food. Only for the celebration of religious feast- 
days, or for the entertainment of guests, were animals 
slaughtered. Every such killing of an animal was a 
religious act, a sacrifice. The firstlings of the flock 
were invariably devoted to this purpose. Where the 
conditions were favorable, half-nomads engaged in a 
little agriculture and established temporarily fixed 
abodes. As a rule they lived in tents. In common with 
farmers, half-nomads were exposed to the raids of 
nomadic Bedawin and lived at enmity with them. 

Fellahin or farmers. During the historical period 
covered by the Old Testament the great mass of the 



MORAL BEGINNINGS 31 

Israelites were agriculturists. A certain amount of 
stock-breeding probably was practised in connection 
with farming in most parts of Palestine. Only in those 
parts of the land which were unsuited to agriculture 
did the raising of sheep and cattle maintain itself as a 
distinct occupation. Even the earliest traditions and 
laws of Israel testify to a time when agriculture was 
the normal occupation of an Israelite. If Jahveh^ ever 
was the tribal deity of nomadic Bedawin who despised 
farmers and farming, shunned settled abodes, and ab- 
horred wine, that period is no longer within the mem- 
ory of Hebrew tradition. Half-nomadism is the only 
stage of previous development which is postulated, as 
in the case of the patriarchs. The first man is put into 
a garden "to dress it and to guard it.*' His expulsion 
from Eden still leaves him a farmer under aggra- 
vated conditions. Even Cain is assumed to have 
been a farmer before the curse of Jahveh made him 
a nomad. 

The earliest collections of laws, both in J and in E, 
are replete with agricultural sanctions and regulations. 
The Book of the Covenant (Ex. 20:22-23:33) con- 
tains much that is applicable to the life of half-nomads, 
a fact which is quite intelligible if this group of laws 
was collected in the grazing regions of the northern 
kingdom among men like Amos of Tekoa. But the 
code was not intended for shepherds and herdsmen 
only. The numerous regulations about fields, har- 
* For use of "Jahveh" instead of "Jehovah" see Note A, Appendix. 



32 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

vests, vineyards, and olive yards reveal an unmistak- 
able background of agricultural life. 

The belief that Jahveh himself furnished instruction 
in husbandry,^ or could appear as the planter of a vine- 
yard,^ or require wine as a constant item of the sacri- 
ficial offerings, is utterly incongruous with nomadic 
ideas and ideals. But the Jahvist, in the story of 
Noah's discovery of wine, regards the products of viti- 
culture as a source of comfort " from the ground which 
Jahveh hath cursed."^ The feast of tabernacles was 
the greatest and most joyous of the three agricultural 
festivals. It was celebrated in the vineyards, about 
the wine-presses, in autumn. The feast of unleavened 
bread, and the feast of weeks, marking respectively 
the beginning of the barley, and the end of the wheat 
harvest, were the other two festivals. The fact that 
every Israelite was solemnly enjoined'* to appear be- 
fore Jahveh" on these three agricultural haggim (sac- 
rificial feasts) shows how far Jahvism had developed 
away from the life and religious ideals of the steppes. 
Jahveh had become the patron of agriculture, and if he 
ever was the patron of nomadism the fact had grown 
so dim in tradition that even Moses is naively made 
into a promulgator of agricultural sanctions. 

Bearing in mind the social differences, pet aversions, 
and religious tendencies of the three classes described 
above, we may now take up the question of nomadic 
survivals in Hebrew tradition. We must assume that 

* Is. 28: 26. 2 is^ 5. i_7, 3 Gen. 5:29; cf. 9:20-27. 



MORAL BEGINNINGS 33 

at some point in their history the Hebrews or their an- 
cestors were nomads and possessed a religion suited 
to their condition, though the vestiges of that religion 
are neither sufficient in number nor distinct enough in 
character to enable us to describe it with any assur- 
ance. It will be sufficient to point out the most proba- 
ble survivals, grouping them for convenience under 
the following heads: — 

I. Objects of worship and forms of ritual 

There are remnants of polydemonism in the Old 
Testament which are best explained as survivals from 
a pre-Mosaic clan life in the desert and on the steppes. 
The oak of the oracle beside Joseph's grave at She- 
chem, the terebinths at Hebron, and the tamarisk at 
Beersheba, are examples of sacred trees in which di- 
vinities were believed to reside. We have noted that 
this tree-cult survives to the present day in Syria and 
Arabia, and probably differs in no essential particulars 
from that of antiquity. Analogous developments in 
other religions suggest that during the pre-Deuter- 
onomic period the haals of famous sacred trees were 
frequently individualized as local Jahvehs, or as the 
numina of venerated ancestors. The sacred pole 
known as the ashera probably was in its origin a con- 
ventionalized sacred tree. 

Holy stones constitute another class of natural ob- 
jects that play a prominent part in the religion of the 
Semites. One interesting passage of E mentions such a 



34 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

stone as having been erected under a sacred oak in the 
sanctuary of Jahveh at Shechem. Joshua there said to 
the people, "Behold, this stone shall be a witness 
against us; for it hath heard all the words of Jahveh 
which he spake unto us." ^ The stone was conceived to 
be the abode of a spirit. A similar thought probably 
prompted the libation of oil poured by Jacob upon the 
stone which he calls Beth-El, '* house of a divinity.** 
'^This stone, which I have set up for a masseba, shall be 
God's house "^ (Beth-Elohim). The common use of 
the appellation "Rock" ^ in the sense of "God," even 
in later Hebrew literature, finds its explanation in 
these early beliefs. Since the same usage and beliefs 
are attested for the Aramaeans and for the Arabs of 
southern Arabia it is reasonable to assume for them a 
common origin among nomadic Semites. 

Holy mountains play a large part in the religion of 
the Semites. Since in Hebrew the same word, Sur, is 
used as an appellative for God and for rocky mountain 
heights we may assume that holy stones and holy 
mountains were kindred objects in popular religious 
thought. Hebrew tradition locates the cradle of Jah- 
vism on Sinai-Horeb, and in the Song of Deborah 
Jahveh comes marching from Mount Sinai to aid the 
hosts of Israel. Tabor, Hermon, Carmel, and especially 
Mount Zion, figure as holy mountains in the religion of 

^ Josh. 24:26, 27. 

2 Gen. 28:22. The El(=divinity) is identified with Elohim (God). 

3 Dt. 32: 15; Ps. 62: 2. Sur is compounded with Shaddai in Num. 
1 : 6, Suri-shaddai, " My Rock is Shaddai.'' Greek writers mention "stones 
with souls" (lithoi empsychoi) as playing a part in Syrian cults. 



MORAL BEGINNINGS 35 

Israel. It was not an inappropriate observation, there- 
fore, when the Syrians said, " Jahveh is a God of the 
mountains." ^ Since in the religion of the Semites 
gods have from the earHest times been owners and res- 
idents of mountains, this feature of Jahvism may be 
a survival. 

The importance of springs to nomads and half-no- 
mads has already been mentioned. As a natural con- 
sequence they, too, were brought into relation to the 
deity. The Old Testament mentions a valley called 
Yiphtach-El, "God opens," which doubtless refers to 
the potency of a sacred spring believed to be a cure 
for childlessness. 2 The Fountain of Judgment at Ka- 
desh Barnea was the seat of an oracle of Jahveh.^ The 
leading characteristics of the sanctuaries of Beersheba 
and Beer-lahai-roi were their sacred springs, as the 
names indicate. Among curious old superstitious cus- 
toms, surviving among the priestly laws of the Penta- 
teuch, is an ordeal prescribed for the detection of 
adultery in a woman. ^ She is required to drink a 
potion of sacred water, presumably taken from a 
spring like those mentioned. The potency of the 
water is increased by the addition of dust from the 
floor of the sanctuary and the ink in which the curse 
has been written. This mode of detecting guilt through 
sacred water magic is so common among Arab nomads 

1 I Kings 20:28; cf. vs. 23. 

2 Josh. 19:14, 27. Cf. Bertholet, Schweiz. Archiv f. Volkskunde, vol. 

XVII. 

3 Gen. 14:7. ^ Num. 5:11-31. 



36 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

to the present day that we are doubtless dealing here 
with a custom dating from nomadic times. In the 
light of these facts it is significant that Hebrew tradi- 
tion brings Moses into connection with two places 
near the Fountain of Judgment, known respectively as 
the Place of Testing and the Place of Litigation — 
Massah and Meribah.^ 

The origin of the ark of Jahveh is shrouded in mys- 
tery. But Gressmann's careful analysis of the Mosaic 
traditions increases the probability of its nomadic 
origin. The elaborate cultus, tabernacle, and rules of 
*' holiness," with which P surrounds the ark, are now 
generally regarded as the product of later ritual theo- 
ries projected back into the Mosaic past. But E's ac- 
count of a plain tent with its portable shrine, guarded 
by Joshua in person, corresponds to the circumstances 
of nomadic times. The oldest references to its use rep- 
resent it as a kind of fetish which was employed to seek 
out a camping-site for the Israelites in the desert.^ 
The presence of Jahveh was identified with it, for 
Moses invoked it in the morning with the words: 
"Arise, O Jahveh, and let thine enemies be scattered, 
and let them that hate thee flee before thee." When it 
came to rest at night he sai^: "Return, O Jahveh, to 
the myriads of Israel." ^ The Books of Samuel furnish 
other striking evidence of the identification of the ark 
with Jahveh^s actual presence.^ The Israelite use of 

1 Ex. 17:2, 7. 2 Num. 10:33. 

' Num. 10:35, 36* * I Sam. 4^7; H Sam. 6:2, 5, 16. 



MORAL BEGINNINGS 37 

the ark in battle strongly resembles a practice which 
survives in Arabia to-day. What seem to be remnants 
of former shrines are mounted upon camels and taken 
into action as an incitement for the warriors.^ 

2. Survivals of family institutions 

We have established the fact that the social organi- 
zation of Semitic nomads was a family organization 
based on patrilineal descent. The same kind of family 
is found to constitute the religious and social unit of 
early Hebrew society. It included, besides the women 
and the children, also the slaves of both sexes. The 
functions of worship could be discharged only by the 
male head of the family, who was known as the haal. 
Being regarded as property, women had no independ- 
ent recognition in the cultus and no right of inheri- 
tance. Unless a trusted male slave could be put for- 
ward to stop the gap, the family ceased as a religious 
and civic unit when the last male representative died.^ 
The horror with which such an event was regarded had 
its roots in the ancestor worship of Semitic kinship 
religion. To die without a male descendant was to im- 
peril the comfort of one's own shade as well as the com- 
fort of the ancestral dead, whose tendance by rites at 
the family tomb was a religious obligation resting only 

* Burkhardt, J. L., Bedouins and Wahabys (London, 1831), vol. i, 
p. 144. 

Blunt, Anna, Bedouin Tribes, vol. 11, p. 146. 

Doughty, CM., Travels in Arabia Deserta, vol. i, p. 61; vol. il, 
p. 304. 

* Gen. 15:2. 



38 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

upon male members of the same family. Hebrew levi- 
rate marriage was a survival of means adopted to fore- 
stall such a calamity. If a man died without having 
left a son, his brother was expected to marry the widow, 
and the first son born of this union was counted the 
son of the deceased, " that his name be not blotted out 
of Israel." Deuteronomy enacted this old custom of 
family religion into a law.^ 

It should be added that the ancient Arab-Hebrew 
custom according to which the nearest male relative of 
the deceased fell heir to his wife or wives, plays a part 
here. But the fundamental reason for it, as indicated 
above, had reference to the dead as well as the living. 
When a man died he was "gathered unto his fathers," ^ 
or "slept with his fathers." ^ Even a phrase like "the 
god of their fathers" remains as a monument of the 
time when the family and its religion found continuity 
only through the haal, the male head of the family. It 
is in family religion that "the fathers," the dead an- 
cestors, play such a prominent part. In common with 
other early peoples the ancient Israelites practised 
ancestor worship, as numerous survivals conclusively 
show. But the Deuteronomists ^ proscribed it as an 
idolatrous practice, and this in spite of the fact that 
they sanctioned levirate marriage, which derived its 
own sanction originally from ancestor worship* The 

1 Dt. 25:5/. ; cf . the Book of Ruth. 2 judg. 2 : 10. 

' I Kings 2 : 10. 

* Dt. 14:1; cf. 26:14. For the best discussion of ancestor worship 
among the Hebrews consult A. Lods, La croyance d> la vie future et le 
culte des morts (1906). 



MORAL BEGINNINGS 39 

connection between the two had apparently been lost 
in the seventh century before Christ. But there can be 
no doubt that ancestor worship, and the customs and 
beliefs connected with it, reach back at least to the 
nomadic period among the Israelites. 

Of nomadic festivals only traces survive. The Pass- 
over, some of whose features mark it as an old atone- 
ment rite, is the one which has most strikingly pre- 
served its original family character. A lamb is to be 
eaten by each family indoors, and no flesh is to be 
carried outside. Only where a family is too small to 
consume the lamb alone may it unite in the ritual with 
a neighboring family. A comparative study of ritual 
custom tends to show that several prescriptions of the 
Passover ritual, though preserved in the late P docu- 
ment,^ are of great antiquity. As such may be in- 
stanced the following requirements: the lamb must be 
eaten entrails and all, but no bones are to be broken ; it 
must be roasted, not boiled; it must be slain in the 
evening after sunset; some of the blood must be 
smeared on the lintel and door-posts of the house, as 
upon entrance massehas of a sanctuary; the meat must 
be consumed during the night and nothing left until 
the morning. The latter requirement even points to an 
origin outside of Jahvism. In other words this family 
festival probably had originally nothing to do with the 
religion of Jahveh, but was carried over out of the pre- 
Mosaic family cults of the Israelite clans, and domesti- 

* Ex. 12:3-11. 



40 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

cated In Jahvism by connecting its origin with the 
exodus, just as Roman customs were domesticated in 
Christian tradition and provided with Christian ori- 
gins. Some features of the ritual mentioned above 
survive as family observances among Arab nomads to 
the present day. 

Another fundamental institution of family and clan 
organization among desert nomads is the practice of 
blood-revenge, as we have already pointed out. The 
custom is widely diffused in the world, especially 
where tribes are still in a primitive stage of civiliza- 
tion. In fact, only under a clan-system can such a 
practice originate or have utility. Where no central 
authority protects families or individuals in their 
rights, clan-sentiment invests private revenge with all 
the sacredness of a religious duty. It was so among the 
Hebrews. When a murder had been committed, the 
nearest kinsman, called the go^el, had to carry out 
the duty of blood-revenge. It was an obligation which 
the tribal god was believed to enforce and share, espe- 
cially in default of a human avenger. The blood of 
Abel cried to Jahveh from the ground, and Cain saw 
the worst consequences of his banishment in the fact 
that in a foreign land there was neither a divine nor a 
human go' el to avenge him if he was slain. In other 
words, the tribal god himself was a member of the clan, 
and as such became the avenger who declared " Surely 
your blood . . . will I require; at the hand of every 
beast will I require it and at the hand of man." * 

1 Gen. 9:5. 



MORAL BEGINNINGS 41 

Hence throughout their history the Israelites called 
Jahveh their go' el. 

It may be remarked that from one point of view this 
made Jahveh guardian of justice, the protector of the 
clansman's life. But this must not be pressed in a 
modern sense. The form of retributive justice which 
he sanctioned was so primitive and partisan that jus- 
tice really was outraged under its own name. For 
under the ancient view of the family's or clan's collec- 
tive responsibility any kinsman of the guilty man 
could be slain in expiation of a murder. Nor were the 
ends of justice served by the common brutal exaction 
of excessive revenge. Tradition put into Jahveh's own 
mouth the typical Bedawi brag that ''whosoever slay- 
eth Cain vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold," ^ 
and in the Song of Lamech has been preserved the 
preposterous boast of a rival clan that 

" If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, 
Truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold." ^ 

There can be no doubt whatever that the practice of 
blood-revenge was already highly developed among 
the Israelites during the earliest nomadic period. So 
ingrained was it, in habit and religion, that even dur- 
ing the period of the monarchy the excesses of private 
revenge were checked only with difficulty. One of the 
earliest means adopted has come down to us in the 
Lex talionis, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a 
tooth." Applied to the practice of blood-revenge, this 
1 Gen. 4:15. 8 Gen. 4:24. 



42 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

rule prohibited the taking of more than one life for a 
life. The appointment of asylums for the manslayer 
was another palliative. 

3. Nomadic reactions against the religion and practices of an 
agricultural society 

The most striking illustration of religious nomadism 
in revolt against agrarian culture is furnished by the 
clan of the Rechabites. During the period between 
Jehu and the fall of Jerusalem they led a pastoral, or 
half-nomadic, life in Palestine. The conditions of life in 
Palestine were so different from those of the desert 
that even pure nomads, who chose to live there, had to 
adopt the habits of half-nomads. The Rechabites, 
however, had preserved and invested with strict re- 
ligious sanctions the most characteristic aversions of 
desert nomads. These aversions are recited in the 
thirty-fifth chapter of Jeremiah. The Rechabites had 
bound themselves not to engage in agriculture; not to 
drink wine ; not to plant or to own a vineyard ; not to 
build houses, but to dwell in tents. 

It is not difficult to discover the sources of this reac- 
tion. The invading nomad Israelites found the agri- 
cultural life of Canaan under the patronage of local 
divinities called haals, and sometimes generically, the 
Baal, The Rechabites were of the Kenites, whom 
Hebrew tradition counts among the original worship- 
pers of Jahveh. What could be more natural than that 
they should identify their devotion to Jahvism with 



MORAL BEGINNINGS 43 

adherence to the simple life and manners of the desert. 
The complex agricultural life of Canaan stood un- 
der the sanction of rival divinities and, therefore, its 
characteristic features and products were declared 
taboo among the strictest of the nomad groups. 

Since the bloody rebellion under Jehu had the sup- 
port of the reputed founder of the religious order of the 
Rechabites, there is good reason to think that it was a 
reaction against Canaanite civilization which brought 
the dynavSty of Jehu into power. Besides the Recha- 
bites, the Nazirite devotees were representatives of 
nomadic ideals, for like the former they abstained 
from the use of wine. Their vows, it seems, were as- 
sumed for limited periods only, during which their hair 
had to remain unshorn. There is reason to think that 
some of the earlier prophets, like Elijah, Elisha, and 
Amos, also were anticultural campaigners for the 
simpler and purer Jahvism of nomadic times. Amos, 
for instance, inveighs against houses of hewn stone, 
and the giving of wine to Nazirites. 

The pre-exilic prophets looked back upon the desert 
period of Israel's religion as the golden age of happiness 
and high ideals, destined to return once more at the 
end of days. "I remember concerning thee," writes 
Jeremiah, "the affection of thy youth, the love of thy 
bridal days, when thou didst follow me through un- 
sown land." And Rosea makes Jahveh say: "I will 
allure her and lead her into the desert [again] and 
speak to her heart . . . that she may become respon- 



44 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

sive there as in the days of her youth.'* ^ These proph- 
ets deplored the change which had come over the re- 
ligion of Israel since their fathers had exchanged the 
desert for the sown. 

A trace of nomadic reaction is perceptible even in 
Deuteronomy. The Deuteronomists' watchword, im- 
plied in every part of their work as clearly as if they 
had stated it, is "Back to the religion of Moses!" For 
this reason they made Moses the representative of 
prophetic, and Aaron of priestly, ideals. From the 
days of Amos onward the prophets had accused the 
priests at Israelite sanctuaries of having appropriated 
the Canaanite cultus for the worship of Jahveh. In 
blaming Aaron for making a bull-image ("golden 
calf") as a likeness of Jahveh, and proclaiming a sac- 
rificial feast to him in connection with its worship, 
they were charging the Hebrew priesthood of their 
time, the Aaronites, with complicity in the evils that 
were to be abolished. "Jahveh was very angry with 
Aaron to destroy him: and I [Moses] prayed for 
Aaron." 2 

It remains now to gather up the loose ends of this 
discussion, to show the effect of these early institu- 
tions and customs in the direction which they gave to 
the development of morals. Since Jahveh was held to 
be the guardian of customary morality the moral as- 
pects of the idea of God are involved too. There were 
few if any customs of the Hebrews* tribal and family 

1 Jer. 2 : 2, and Hos. 2 : 14, 15. ^ Dt. 9: 20, 21 ; cf. Ex. 32 : 1-8. 



MORAL BEGINNINGS 45 

life, as the Old Testament shows, which they did not 
invest with divine sanctions. Since it is not to be sup- 
posed for a moment that a people will put a "Thus 
saith the Lord" behind customs which the contempo- 
rary social conscience does not approve, an appraisal 
of such sanctions is an appraisal of the culture of the 
time. Religion and civilization stand and fall together 
in our judgment of the practices and beliefs of society. 

We have pointed out one or two by-products of an- 
cestor cult. There are many others. Let us consider 
for a moment the privileges of the first-born. They 
were grounded in the family religion and family moral- 
ity. But they had in them elements of injustice which, 
as time went on, no divine sanctions could hide. The 
first-born son was, next to the father, the foremost 
bearer of the obligations of ancestor cult, which by its 
very nature was restricted to the family. The very 
existence of the family was believed to depend upon 
the proper discharge of these obligations. In this fact 
were founded the first-born's superior rights of inheri- 
tance, and they continued to be his, without a chal- 
lenge of their justice, long after their attendant obliga- 
tions and origin had been forgotten. We are dealing 
with the products of a communal conception of re- 
ligion, and they must be judged from the point of view 
of communal ethics and psychology. 

From the same level of ideas arose the ancient 
belief in the sanctity of the parent and in the great 
potency of parental curses and blessings. They had 



y 



46 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

behind them the mysterious power which the endorse- 
ment of the clan-deity could give. The stories of Noah 
and his sons, and of Jacob and Esau, make dramatic 
capital of this sinister power of the father, as the re- 
ligious head of the family, to influence the destiny of 
his offspring by his curses and his blessings. The unique 
authority of the father and the solidarity of the family 
are presupposed in such beliefs. 

From a sense of the unity of that life which was be- 
lieved to animate all the members of a family sprang 
the idea of the collective responsibility of the kinship 
group. The feeling of solidarity bred within the an- 
cient family, as the primary unit of human society, 
gradually transcended actual, though not theoretical, 
kinship until, with the growing complexity of social 
organization, it included successively the clan, the 
tribe, and finally the nation. Religion based upon 
such a concept of kinship necessarily develops a type 
of social morality peculiar to itself. Injury, guilt, or 
innocence, are not matters of the individual, but of the 
group. "Our blood has been shed" was the Arab's 
mode of referring to the murder of a tribesman. It was 
a tribal injury and involved tribal responsibility, for 
the murder rested not upon the murderer alone but 
upon his entire family, or clan, and might be avenged 
in the persons of any of its members. Unless atoned 
for by the reprisals of the blood-avenger, the go' el, such 
blood-guiltiness was inherited by the children and the 
children's children. In other words it remained upon 



MORAL BEGINNINGS 47 

the clan even though there was a complete change of 
its constituent individuals. It was this law of blood- 
revenge, and its satisfaction, which furnished the most 
striking illustration of the guilt of the fathers being 
visited upon the children. Among modern Bedawin, as 
we have noted, such an inheritance descends to the 
fifth generation. 

This moral economy of their tribal life was trans- 
ferred by the ancient Hebrews, as by members of simi- 
lar primitive societies, to their theology. The sin of 
one member of the clan, or tribe, spread as by infec- 
tion to the whole, and the punishment inflicted must 
be suffered by representative individuals, or by all. 
And one must be careful not to import the modern idea 
of sin into this period. More often than not the of- 
fence consisted in the breaking of some taboo like that 
of the tree in the garden of Eden ; in the handling of 
some "holy" or "unclean" thing, or in failure to ob- 
serve some ritual requirement — all matters that have 
vanished from the modern idea of sin. Guilt thus in- 
curred was believed, in the eyes of God, also, to de- 
scend from generation to generation. Therefore the 
Hebrew sage scrupled not to make Jahveh speak of 
" visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the chil- 
dren, and upon the children's children." ^ 

To a society whose institutions were based upon the 
supposed solidarity of kinship groups, whether large or 
small, this doctrine of collective guilt and punishment 

' Ex. 34:7. 



48 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

was as natural and inevitable as it seems shocking to 
the moral feeling of civilized communities of our day. 
Having once found lodgment in religious thought, re- 
ligious conservatism kept it there as a principle of 
God's retributive justice even after Deuteronomy had 
eliminated it from the Hebrew civil code by providing 
that the fathers were not to be put to death for the 
children, nor the children for the fathers.^ The incon- 
gruity of making God condemn as unjust in their con- 
duct what they believed he himself continued to do, 
did not seem to trouble Hebrew thinkers until the 
time of Ezekiel. 

The character of the marriage relation, the status of 
women, and the treatment of slaves, where the institu- 
tion of slavery exists, are other indices of a people's 
moral and cultural advancement. The subject of slav- 
ery calls for detailed discussion in another connection. 
We can note here only the fact that slavery existed 
among the Hebrews from the earliest period, and was 
invested with divine sanctions in the Mosaic Law. 
What does concern us here is the moral status of a 
family which included female slaves as part of the 
harem. 

The marriage relation among the Hebrews was es- 
tablished by the purchase of a wife. There was no be- 
trothal in the modern sense. The English version of 
the Old Testament tries to cover with this word the 
period between the payment of the mohar, or purchase 

1 Dt. 24: 16. 



MORAL BEGINNINGS 49 

price, to the father, and the transfer of the daughter to 
the husband's abode. Sometimes, as in the case of 
Leah and Rachel, the equivalent of the price was paid 
in work. In consequence of the purchase, a wife was 
regarded as part of a man*s property, and was enum- 
erated among his possessions with slaves and domes- 
tic animals. 

Marriage by purchase was a very ancient Semitic 
institution. It underlies some of the family regulations 
in the Code of Hammurabi twenty-two centuries be- 
fore the Christian era. But in some important respects 
the Babylonian family stood upon a higher level than 
that of Israel. The Babylonian husband's power over 
his wife as his property had been checked by the state, 
and her social and economic status was consequently 
more assured. For instance, a husband's reasons for 
desiring to divorce his wife had to be well founded. 
Otherwise the step involved for him the payment to 
her of considerable indemnity, and the children re- 
mained with her. Among the Hebrews divorce was 
surprisingly easy, and the disadvantages appear to 
have been wholly borne by the woman. Her father, 
uncles, and brothers were her only protection against 
her husband. Burkhardt's account of the easy and 
frequent divorces among Bedawin of the desert fur- 
nishes another point of resemblance between customs 
of desert nomads and those of ancient Israel. 

Characteristic of the more advanced culture of 
Babylon is the important fact that the Code of Ham- 



50 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

murabi allows a man to have only one wife.^ Chronic 
illness or childlessness are the only circumstances un- 
der which a secondary wife is permitted. Even these 
exceptions prove adherence to the monogamic princi- 
ple, since the rights of the first wife are safeguarded, 
and she takes precedence over the second wife. But in 
ancient Israel monogamy, though sometimes assumed 
as an ideal, was neither a civil nor a religious require- 
ment. On the contrary polygamy was so normal and 
habitual that the Talmudists attempted to regulate it 
by prescribing a limit of four wives for the average 
Jew, and eighteen for a king. During the earlier period, 
it seems, the number of a man's wives was limited only 
by his ability to buy and support them. This may ex- 
plain why bigamy, in the Old Testament, appears to 
have been the normal practice among half-nomads and 
farmers. The prohibition of the right of divorce by the 
Mosaic Law under special circumstances, becomes sig- 
nificant in the light of these facts. Does it mean that 
under ordinary circumstances divorce might be em- 
ployed to preserve the balance between a man's ability 
to support and his desire for new additions to his 
harem? In any case monogamy did not come to full 
recognition among the Jews until the ninth century 
A.D., and then under Christian influences emanating 
from Spain. 2 

Concubinage was an institution that existed among 

1 Cf. Cook, The Laws of Moses and the Code of Hammurabi (1903), 
chap. V. 

2 Cf. RGG, Ehe und Familie, Steffen. 



MORAL BEGINNINGS 51 

the Hebrews as well as among neighboring Semites. 
It was common enough to require regulation by cus- 
tomary law, and was obviously a heavy drag upon 
family morality. A group of such regulations has been 
preserved in the book of Exodus: ''If a man [an Is- 
raelite] sell his daughter as a bondwoman, she shall not 
be set free [in the seventh year] as the bondmen are. 
If she please not her master after he hath known her, 
he may allow her to be redeemed; but into a strange 
family he shall not have the right to sell her, when he 
hath dealt deceitfully with her. If, however, he turn 
her over to his son he shall deal with her according to 
the rights of daughters. If he take [still] another [con- 
cubine, and keep the former] he shall not diminish her 
portion of flesh, her raiment, and her duty of marriage. 
And if he do not any of these three things for her, then 
shall she go free for nothing, without indemnity." ^ 

This passage shows that a Hebrew father had the 
legal right to sell his daughter as a slave, and that ^ 
female slaves were customarily taken as concubines by 
their masters. This afforded opportunities to libidi- 
nous creditors which early Hebrew society must have 
found it difficult to tolerate. The fact that these regu- 
lations temporize with the evil shows how well estab- 
lished the practice was among those who exercised 
control over custom. If a purchaser tired of a young 

1 Ex. 21: 7-1 1 (E). The English rendering, even of the R.V., is inac- 
curate; cf. Holzinger's rendering in HSAT. The portion of flesh (vs. 
10) refers to the meat distributed on festal occasions at the sacrificial 
feasts (I Sam. 1:4-5). 



52 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

woman he might afterwards, on the authority of the 
law, allow her to be redeemed, probably by taking 
back a part of the purchase money, or he could turn 
her over to his son. If he did not fulfil these condi- 
tions, and yet wished to take another concubine, he 
had to let the first one go free rather than shorten her 
in her rights of maintenance. 

If a man other than her master had intercourse with 
a concubine it was apparently not considered adultery, 
but a breach of property rights. The case is stated 
thus in the Law of Holiness [H] : " If a man have carnal 
intercourse with a woman who is a slave, betrothed to 
another man [her master], but who was not at all re- 
deemed nor given her freedom, a punishment shall be 
imposed, but they shall not be put to death, because 
she was not free." ^ The odalisk at least could hope 
for humaner treatment than a wife when caught. 

We cannot deal here with the origin of this wretched 
by-product of Semitic life. The fact that the foreign 
word pilegesh is used in Hebrew, besides the native 
word for concubine, 'amah, shows that girls were im- 
ported from Phoenicia to meet a demand that exceeded 
the native supply. Since the institution was permitted 
and regulated in the Old Testament with a ** Jahveh 
said unto Moses," early Christianity, bound by its 
literal interpretation of Scripture, found it difhcult to 

^ Lev. 19:20. Priestly redactors of a later period added two verses 
which established their claim to a ram in the form of a trespass-offering, 
by means of which the offender was absolved from guilt. Cf. Lev. 19:20- 
21, and Ezek. 44:29. 



MORAL BEGINNINGS 53 

abolish it. Concubinage was actually sanctioned by 
the Synod of Toledo in 400 a.d., and was not actively 
suppressed as social impurity until the fifth Lateran 
Council in 15 16. 

The institution of slavery among the Hebrews will 
be discussed under the ''Social Ethics of Deuteron- 
omy.'* It appears to have existed among them from 
the earliest times and Jahveh's approval is naively ex- 
tended to it as to other social institutions of their 
time. It scarcely is necessary to call attention to the 
fact that the decalogue prohibits neither polygamy 
nor slavery although they both were practised among 
the Hebrews at the time when the ten commandments 
are supposed to have been promulgated. On the theory 
of morality through revelation by commands from the 
blue, rather than through religious experience, it will 
be difficult to account for the omission of two com- 
mandments whose moral effect would have been 
greater than that of most of the prohibitions of the 
decalogue. 



CHAPTER III 

MORAL CHARACTER OF JAHVEH AND HIS CLIENTS 
IN THE EARLY LITERATURE 

In the previous chapter we utilized the JE tradi- 
tions as indirect sources of information about the re- 
ligion of Israel as it was before the conquest of Canaan 
and just after. We shall now use them as direct sources 
for the period which extends from the time of Deborah 
to that of Amos, from 1200 to 750 B.C. (cf. Chronology, 
p. xxii). We shall call this the pre-prophetic or Ca- 
naanite period of Israel's religion.^ Even within this 
period of approximately five hundred years our liter- 
ary data are not as full as we could wish. They are 
most satisfactory for the eighth and ninth centuries; 
less so for the tenth and eleventh. The traditions 
which pertain to the period from 1200 to 1000 B.C. 
have come down to us in the form of twice-used build- 
ing-stones. Some, in fact, may have a more compli- 
cated history than that, and they often fill a place in 
the new literary structure for which they were not 
originally intended. 

The length of the period with which we are dealing 
suggests the probability of considerable change. But 
before the political unification of the tribes under 

1 The term "pre-prophetic" is not strictly accurate, since it does not 
refer to a time when there were no Hebrew prophets, but to the time be- 
fore Amos, the first prophet whose writings survive. 



MORAL CHARACTER OF JAHVEH 55 

David and Solomon, changes in the popular concep- 
tion of God, duty, and religion probably were local, 
slow, and inconsiderable. Besides, our sources for the 
earlier period are too indirect and scanty to warrant 
separate treatment. A better view of the religious 
situation is obtained by treating the period in question 
as a whole, remembering that our sources belong 
chiefly to the ninth and eighth centuries. They con- 
sist of the J and E traditions embedded in Genesis, 
Exodus, Numbers, and Joshua; the hero and prophet 
stories in the Books of Judges and of Samuel; and the 
oldest elements in the Books of Kings. 

We noted in the preceding chapter that the religion 
of the ancient Semite was a part of his custom. The 
Israelites were Semites and religion was a part, also, of 
their custom; hence the interdependence of religious 
ideas and social custom which we shall have constant 
occasion to observe in our study of Israel's religion. 
One would naturally suppose that under these circum- 
stances their conception of God would be built up out 
of the materials which their practical experience sup- 
plied. 

Their conception of man at his best was that of a 
sheik, or of a king, whose two chief functions were to 
dispense justice and to fight their battles.^ But even 
by the standards of their own time the best of their 
chieftains and kings were irascible, unjust, selfish, and 
barbarous. It is scarcely to be expected, therefore, 

1 I Sam. 8:20. 



56 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

that a conception of God which grew out of experience 
with such leaders in an unreflecting age could be in all 
respects admirable. We shall see that the limitations 
and faults of Jahveh's prototypes frequently reappear 
in his character as we find it delineated in the early 
traditions. 

i?% The religion of the pre-prophetic period is dominated 
by two correlate ideas: (i) that Jahveh is the God of 
Palestine only, being more or less localized at sanctua- 
ries within its borders, and consequently an intramun- 
dane deity ; (2) that he was the God of Israel alone, be- 
ing concerned solely about the welfare of his Israelite 
worshippers, and the retention of their exclusive hom- 
age. He is, therefore, a national deity — an ardent 
partisan on behalf of his clients when they are loyal, 
and destructively resentful when they pay homage to 
rival deities. Within the boundaries established by 
these two controlling ideas practically the entire re- 
ligious thought of the period moves. 

The localization of deities at Semitic sanctuaries is 
a matter well known. Intercourse between the deity 
and his worshippers was assumed to be subject to 
physical conditions of a definite kind. The worshipper 
must go to the sanctuary in order to *' appear before 
Jahveh." ^ In other words, God was to the early He- 
brew a part of the natural world in which he was living. 
One of the incidental results of this physical concep- 
tion of the deity was a naive popular belief that a dif- 

1 I Sam. i: 19, 22. 



MORAL CHARACTER OF JAHVEH 57 

ferent Jahveh resided at each of the many sanctuaries. 
A full discussion of this psychological phenomenon 
will be found in a separate chapter. 

We are more particularly concerned at this point 
with the fact that the Hebrews, during the cruder 
stages of the national-god period of their religion, be- 
lieved Jahveh's presence and power to be limited to the 
territory inhabited by the Israelites. ''Jahveh hath 
anointed thee to be prince over his inheritance y'' said 
Samuel to Saul when he anointed him king. It is not 
difficult to see that this conception of "Jahveh's in- 
heritance" has been modelled on the idea of a king and 
his domain. 

This circumstance furnishes an explanation of what 
at first sight would seem to be incidents and beliefs in- 
consistent with the idea of a Jahveh who is confined to 
Palestine. A king's power does not properly extend 
beyond the boundaries of his kingdom. But if his 
army invades foreign territory, or if persons or objects 
representative of his rule penetrate into adjacent re- 
gions, the ancient story-teller immediately enlarges 
the sphere of his influence and activity. Descriptions 
of Jahveh's activity exhibit analogous treatment. 
Abraham and Moses in Egypt, the sacred ark among 
the Philistines, are accompanied by manifestations of 
his power. But even under these circumstances it is 
usually mediated physically by a magic wand, a sacred 
chest, or by the person of the "prophet" who is endued 
with mysterious power by the deity. ^ 

1 Gen. 20:7. 



58 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

The appearance of Jahveh at the tower of Babel, and 
his extra- Palestinian activity in the narratives of the 
Garden of Eden and of the Flood, may be regarded as 
due primarily to the domestication in Hebrew tradition 
of stories in which other deities were originally the 
actors. This, to cite an example, is the way in which 
Jahveh became the subduer of the sea-dragon, a ca- 
pacity in which he displaced the Babylonian god Mar- 
duk.^ As additional instances might be mentioned 
two legends, in one of which Jahveh wrestles with 
Jacob at the ford of the Jabbok, and in the other at- 
tempts to slay Moses at a lodging-place on his way to 
Egypt. In both stories Jahveh has undoubtedly taken 
the place of local night-demons. 

It will readily be seen that when Jahveh was made 
the hero of exploits in which originally other divinities 
figured, it was not always possible to change the scene 
of action to Jahveh's own domain, the land of Pales- 
tine. We may assume, too, that some transfers were 
made by compilers to whom Jahveh was already a 
universal God, and who, therefore, did not feel the 
need of accounting for his exercise of power in foreign 
territory. Earlier writers had different ideas upon this 
subject, for one records that when the Israelites were 
besieging a Moabite city, and the Moabite king sacri- 
ficed his eldest son, his god Chemosh brought calamity 
upon the Israelites, so that they returned to their own 
land. It was because Chemosh was mor^ powerful in 

1 Cf. Is. 27:1; 51:9, etc. 



MORAL CHARACTER OF JAHVEH 59 

Moab than Jahveh that "there came great wrath upon 
Israel." ^ 

In attempting to explain what are clearly incon- 
gruous elements in the early Hebrew conception of 
Jahveh it is important not to overlook the probability 
that we may be dealing with mingled products of at 
least two widely different religious developments. If 
the one went back to nomadic origins, and was in the 
main Hebraic, the other probably rested upon agri- 
cultural origins and was predominantly Canaanite. 
Among resulting differences in point of view may have 
to be reckoned, on the one hand, those passages which 
assume Jahveh's abode to be in heaven, and on the 
other, those which assume that he abides upon the 
earth. 2 

Israel's early connections with Arabia and its moon 
religion, the investment of Jahveh with the attributes 
of a storm-god and mountain-god, and the disposition 
of nomadic peoples to detach their deity from the soil, 
favored the view that Jahveh was celestial rather than 
terrestrial. Hence it is said that he came " down " upon 
Sinai, ^ and the ''angel" of Jahveh spoke "from 
heaven." ^ It should be remarked, however, that these 

^ II Kings 3:27. 

^ In the present context Jahveh's declaration, "I will go down" (Gen. 
18:21), must refer to the descent from the mountains of Judah to Sodom. 
In Gen. 19:24, "from heaven" is a superfluous gloss (Kautzsch). It is a 
question whether in Solomon's prayer (I Kings 8:22^.) the references to 
heaven may not also be late editorial glosses (Kamphausen, HSAT). 

' Ex. 19:11,20 (JE);34:5 (J); 24: 10 (J). 

* Gen. 21: 17 (E); 22: II, 15 (E). In these passages the "angel "prob- 
ably has been substituted for Jahveh himself. 



60 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

distinctions can easily be pressed too far, for it would, 
of course, be a serious mistake to invest the old He- 
brew notions of heaven and earth with our modern 
philosophical and theological connotations. Jahveh 
descends upon Sinai from a cloud, which shows that 
the ** heaven" of these early writers still is a part of 
their physical world. A heaven that is in danger of 
being invaded from a building, as in the tower of Babel 
story, or can be reached by a ladder, even in a dream, 
is scarcely above the imagination of a child. But the 
narrators of these traditions believed Jahveh to be at 
least a supra-terrestrial being, and their views main- 
tained themselves with more or less tenacity until he 
was universalized by the prophets and a vaster heaven 
became his proper abode in popular thought. 

The localization of Jahveh within the world receives 
further illustration from Hebrew beliefs about the abid- 
ing-place of the dead. These beliefs also furnish addi- 
tional evidence of a mixture of contradictory concep- 
tions. According to the ancient family religion of the 
Israelites the dead had their abode within the ances- 
tral tomb and received offerings there. For the com- 
fort of the deceased after death it was very important, 
therefore, that his body should be "gathered unto his 
fathers.*' 

But they also believed in a common abiding-place 
of all the dead — the underworld called Sheol. Reli- 
gions in their earlier stages attach little importance 
to the logical coherence of beliefs. This may account 



MORAL CHARACTER OF JAHVEH 6i 

for the fact that the obvious contradictoriness of the 
two views does not seem to have troubled the Hebrew 
writers. But they instinctively refrained from repre- 
senting Jahveh as interfering directly with Sheol. To 
chastise enemies who have taken refuge in the realm 
of the dead he first snatches them thence.^ Neither 
worship nor praise are offered to him there, ^ presum- 
ably because the dead were themselves regarded as 
divinities (elohim), and consequently as rivals. 

In short, there is reason to think that the belief in 
Sheol was adopted into Hebrew religion from else- 
where, and always formed a somewhat indigestible 
lump in the mass of earlier beliefs. If the story of the 
fall of Adam and Eve is meant to represent death as a 
consequence of sin, as something unintended in the 
plan of God, how could the Old Testament writers 
suppose that God created Sheol from the beginning 
as a place for the reception of the dead? Curiously 
enough Sheol is never mentioned among the creations 
of God either in the first chapter of Genesis or in IV 
Esdras 6. Yet a creationist ^ had no choice but to 
make God responsible also for Sheol. It certainly 
looks as if Sheol, which bears striking resemblances to 
the Babylonian Aralu, were something imported into 
Israel's religion. This, and the fact that Sheol was the 
domain of other elohim, would account for the disin- 

1 Am. 9: 2. 2 pg. 6.5.13.38:18, 19. 

^ The rabbis of the Middle Ages referred the creation of Sheol to the 
Second day because the approving formula, "and he saw that it was 
good," is omitted for that day ! 



62 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

clination of Hebrew writers to bring Jahveh into rela- 
tion to it. 

Leaving now these general considerations of Jah- 
veh's within-the- world character, let us turn to more 
specific phases of the subject. The fact that Jahveh 
and his worship were popularly believed to be insepa- 
rable from Palestine may be illustrated by a number 
of interesting passages. One Old Testament writer 
speaks of the sacred ark, with which he associates the 
presence of Jahveh, as going up " by the way of its own 
border."^ Cain complains, ''Behold thou hast driven 
me out this day from the face of the ground [i.e., Pal- 
estine]: and from thy face shall I be hid [i.e., deprived 
of thy care and protection]." ^ The same presupposi- 
tions underlie the complaint of David: "They have 
driven me out this day that I should not cleave unto 
the inheritance of Jahveh, saying Go serve other gods. 
Now, therefore, let not my blood fall to the earth away 
from the presence of Jahveh." ^ Expulsion from Pal- 
estine, "the inheritance of Jahveh," involves separa- 
tion from him and his worship. To enjoy a measure of 
protection in a foreign land the fugitive had to adopt 
the religion of the land and people that sheltered him. 
What Ruth the Moabitess says to her mother-in-law 
— "thy people shall be my people, and thy god my 
god" — is according to ancient views an inevitable 
consequence of her determination to exchange her na- 
tive land for the land of Judah. These conceptions, of 

» I Sam. 6:9. [^ Gen. 4:14 (J). ^ j gam. 26; 19, 20. 



MORAL CHARACTER OF JAHVEH 63 

course, were not peculiar to the Hebrews, but were 
shared by their Semitic neighbors. Thus one reads 
that Naaman, desirous of establishing a private cultus 
of Jahveh at his home in Syria, asks permission to take 
along ''two mules' burden of earth." ^ He assumes 
that Jahveh cannot be worshipped in a foreign land 
unless the altar stands upon soil brought from Pales- 
tine. Syrian soil would be considered polluted, from 
the point of view of Jahveh's worshippers, by the 
presence and ownership of other deities. Equally sug- 
gestive is the case of the colonists deported by the 
Assyrians and settled around Samaria. Being har- 
assed by wild beasts they ascribe their plight to the 
fact that ^'they know not the law [i.e., ritual require- 
ments] of the god of the land." Consequently applica- 
tion was made for a Hebrew priest who "came and 
dwelt in Bethel, and taught them how they should 
fear [i.e., worship] Jahveh." ^ 

It appears, therefore, that Jahveh was subject to 
physical conditions of a definite sort. These necessa- 
rily involve other limitations. A tribal or a national 
deity is by very definition a limited being. He can be 
neither omnipotent nor omniscient. Such attributes 
are applicable only to a deity whose rule is universal. 
So long as Jahveh was believed to reside only within 
Israel's territory, conceptions of his might and power 
were determined by this belief. Within the borders of 
Palestine, however, the Israelites ascribed to him a 

1 II Kings 5:17. 2 II Kings 17:24-28. 



64 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

practical omnipotence. If an eastern potentate's sub- 
jects scarcely dared to suggest that there were limits 
to the king's power, how much less likely were they to 
employ such language about their national god? 
Hence the proverb ^*Is anything too hard for Jah- 
veh?" ^ If he chooses to assist Jonathan and his 
armor-bearer, there is nothing that can hinder him to 
help "by many or by few." ^ 

But even these expressions do not disguise the fact 
that the ancient Hebrew thought of God as overcoming 
resistance with effort, and as feeling exasperation 
over the thwarting of his plans. The latter was due in 
part to the assumed limitations of his knowledge. In 
order to find a mate for Adam he first engaged in a 
futile experiment with animals. He had to search and 
call for Adam when the latter had hidden himself. 
Disappointment over the corruption of mankind 
''grieved him at his heart," ' so that he resolved upon 
the destruction of his handiwork. Not a few of his 
actions, like Adam's expulsion from Eden and the con- 
fusion of tongues, were inspired by fear that man 
might encroach upon his privileges. In order to un- 
derstand the character of men's doings " Jahveh came 
down to see the city and the tower which the children 
of men builded." ^ Similarly he went himself to Sodom 
and Gomorrah in order to "see whether they have 
done altogether according to the cry of it, which is 
come unto me; and if not, I will know." ^ 

1 Gen. i8: 14 (J). « I Sam. 14:6. » Gen. 6:6 Q). 

* Gen. 11:5 (J). 6 Gen. 18:21 (J). 



MORAL CHARACTER OF JAHVEH 65 

It will occur to the reader that a deity who betrays 
anxiety lest his creatures obtain the wisdom or the 
power to invade his prerogatives has not only physical 
but moral limitations. Observe the tacit assumption 
that if man succeeds in eating of the fruit of the tree of 
life he will have gained something of which even Jah- 
veh cannot deprive him. In other words the tree pos- 
sesses a magical virtue which is independent of Jah- 
veh's will or power. If this were not the case, why are 
preventive measures adopted "lest he put forth his 
hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live 
forever?*' 

Apparently it was the physical limitations of Jahveh 
which, in the thought of ancient Israel, sometimes 
made him act from unworthy motives. We find in 
the early traditions no assured conviction that God 
uses his power only for moral ends. The self-regarding 
motives with which the early writers endow him often 
betray him into unethical actions. Hence the pos- 
session of great power on his part was to them a 
source of fear rather than of comfort, for they thought 
he used it more often to avenge personal affronts than 
to enforce obedience to the moral customs of the time. 

One of the causes which favored this mode of 
thinking about Jahveh was the settled habit of explain- 
ing every calamity or natural phenomenon as due to 
Jahveh's direct action. Famine, disease, sudden death, 
depredations of wild beasts, unsuccess in war, earth- 
quakes, solar eclipses — whenever any of these events 



66 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

occurred the ancient Hebrew looked about for some 
specific cause that might have moved Jahveh to action. 
Obviously no one at this time knew anything about 
the operation of natural laws. But tragic events were 
taking place constantly, and the supposed infringe- 
ment of numerous ceremonial taboos offered the 
easiest recourse for an explanation. While neither the 
heeding nor the neglect of some of these ceremonial 
regulations presented a moral aspect, they all, unfor- 
tunately, made Jahveh play the part of a jealous guard- 
ian of his personal rights. In so far their effect was to 
depress the moral conception of Jahveh. 

When David undertook to bring the sacred ark to 
Jerusalem, Uzzah, with the best intention, put forth 
his hand to keep it from falling off the cart at a point 
where the oxen became restive. Whether the realiza- 
tion that he had violated a taboo induced heart-failure 
or a stroke of apoplexy, is impossible to tell. In any 
case sudden death overtook him, and this fact required 
an explanation. The one which the Biblical writer 
offers is surprisingly unethical, but quite in accord 
with contemporary superstitions about Jahveh and 
the ark. ''The anger of Jahveh was kindled against 
Uzzah; and God smote him there for his error; and 
there he died by the ark of God."^ The mysterious 
occurrence leads the narrator to remark further that 
** David was afraid of Jahveh that day." He dis- 
trusted his mood. Under the circumstances it was con- 

1 II Sam. 6:7-9. 



MORAL CHARACTER OF JAHVEH 67 

sidered prudent not to bring the ark into Jerusalem, 
but to leave it in the house of a foreigner, Obed-Edom, 
where it could be observed for a change in Jahveh's 
temper. 

On another occasion, when David was a fugitive, he 
is recorded as having said to Saul, "If it be Jahveh 
that hath stirred thee up against me, let him accept 
an offering: but if it be the children of men, cursed be 
they before Jahveh."^ He thought it quite possible 
that God, for some reason, might be intriguing against 
him, in which case he could be bought off with a sacri- 
fice. On still another occasion David regarded it as 
certain that Jahveh had commanded Shimei to curse 
him, 2 and a writer of the Book of Judges declared that 
"God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the 
men of Shechem." ^ 

But most revealing of all is the last chapter in the 
second book of Samuel, which records the origin of the 
sanctuary at Jerusalem. The chapter tells how Jahveh^ 
incited David to take a census of the Israelites and 
then took offence because David complied. The idea 
that God may tempt men to commit a sin in order that 
he may have an excuse for punishing them was not 
uncommon in antiquity. It has been embodied in the 
proverbial saying that God first renders mad those 
whom he would destroy. When the time of reckoning 
arrived David was given his choice of three punish- 

* I Sam. 26 : 19. 2 ji Sam. 16 : 10. ^ Judg. 9 -.23. 

^ The chronicler (I Chron. 21: i) unloads responsibility for the insti- 
gation of the act upon Satan. 



68 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

merits: seven years of famine, three months of flight 
before his enemies, or a three days' pestilence. David 
chose the pestilence and seventy thousand of his inno- 
cent warriors died for his personal act before the 
plague was stayed. To a modern mind such acts of 
caprice are unthinkable in connection with God. But 
to the ancient Hebrew, who sometimes was forced to 
harmonize the oracular directions of one day with the 
calamities of the next, events seemed to prove that 
Jahveh was liable at times to "break forth "^ into 
unaccountable acts and sudden exhibitions of ill 
temper. 

Having set these facts before the reader we ought, 
perhaps, to say a little more about the personality of 
Jahveh as it presents itself in the prophetic documents. 
That the narrators did not hesitate to ascribe human 
passions to him is an open fact to all readers of the 
Old Testament. In the later periods of Hebrew liter- 
ature it is possible to detect a growing sensitiveness on 
this score, and a deliberate avoidance of crude an- 
thropomorphisms. But the writers of the J and E 
documents did not hesitate to endow Jahveh with 
their own passionate natures. 

Like other ancient religious communities they at- 
tributed their own enmities and hatreds to the national 
deity, and the horrible barbarities of war practised in 
those days not only had Jahveh's sanction, but were 
enforced as religious duties. We need instance only 

» II Sam. 6:8. 



MORAL CHARACTER OF JAHVEH 69 

the case of Saul and the Amalekites. Saul's failure to 
carry out utterly, from whatever motive, the vow to 
destroy both man and beast, should from our point of 
view have been reckoned to his credit, instead of 
haying been made the occasion to deprive him of the 
kingship. But foreign nations and the gods were held 
to be so unquestionably foes of Jahveh that Old Testa- 
ment writers often represent him as angrily resenting 
the sparing of conquered enemies. Every foreigner 
was at least a potential enemy. Actual foes of Jahveh 
were all with whom Israel engaged in feud or warfare, 
so that a record of Israel's martial exploits could be 
entitled "Book of the Wars of Jahveh."^ 

A peculiarly primitive conception of Jahveh's per- 
sonality comes to expression in the Jahvistic stratum 
of Ex. 32 and 33. The jealous wrath of Jahveh is 
aroused by the worship of the ''golden calf," and he 
resolves to destroy the faithless Israelites. Then 
Moses intervenes by reminding him of his oath, and 
by recalling him, as it were, to his own better self, so 
that he is led to ''repent of the evil which he said he 
would do unto his people." By comparison Moses 
appears more just and humane than God, who, like 
a quick-tempered monarch, is protected by his vizier 
from the consequences of his own ill-considered actions. 

The Jahvist apparently did not feel Jahveh's lia- 
bility to sudden fits of anger as a moral defect. He 
even puts into the mouth of God the words, "Ye are 
1 Num. 21:14. 



70 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

a stiff-necked people; if I go up in the midst of thee 
for one moment, I shall consume thee."^ The context, 
in which the "fierce wrath "^ of Jahveh plays so large 
a part, makes it clear that in these words Jahveh ex- 
presses distrust of his own angry moods. The grave 
moral defects of such a conception of God need not 
be pointed out. They are the shadows of the Jahvist*s 
social experience projected upon the clouds. 

The counterpart to Jahveh's spatial and other lim- 
itations is found in the attitude toward non- Israelites 
which the early writers ascribe to him. A national 
deity is a partisan deity, and Jahveh is no exception 
in this respect. Even though such a deity should define 
religion in terms of moral obligation, it would be 
moral obligation between Israelites only. For just as 
Jahveh to the early writers is the God of Palestine and 
not of the universe, so he is the God of Israel and not 
of mankind. The influence of this nationalistic con- 
ception of Jahveh was felt strongly within the sphere 
of social duty. Its immediate effect was to limit the 
range of moral obligation to dealings with one's coun- 
trymen. Given the belief that Jahveh's interest is 
limited to Israelites, and that he is the patron of 
justice between Israelites merely within the borders of 

1 Ex. 33:5 (E); cf. vs. 3 (JE). Observe the naive implication that 
Jahveh is a localized personality. If he does not go up with Israel he 
does not expose himself to those occasions which might provoke him to 
destructive manifestations of anger. Jahveh's knowledge of the conduct 
of the Israelites depends upon his physical presence among them. This 
presence was in early times associated with the ark. 

2 Ex. 32: 9-14 QE). 



MORAL CHARACTER OF JAHVEH 71 

his own land, it follows that dealings with foreigners 
are governed by expediency, not by moral obligation. 

This restriction of early Hebrew social morality to 
the tribal or national group corresponds to similar de- 
velopments elsewhere. Cicero wrote that to "confine 
man to the duties of his own city, and to disengage 
him from duties to the members of other cities, is to 
break the universal society of the human race."^ But 
on the whole it was not until the beginning of the 
Christian era, according to Lecky,nhat the Romans 
experienced that *' enlargement of moral sympathies 
which, having at first comprised only a class or a sta- 
tion, came at last, by the destruction of many artifi- 
cial barriers, to include all classes and all nations.'' 
Though earlier Greek thinkers had expressed a broader 
view, Aristotle in the fourth century B.C. still held that 
"Greeks owe no greater duties to barbarians than to 
wild beasts." It need not surprise any one, therefore, 
to find that there was no religious or moral bond 
regulating the conduct of Israelites with men of other 
nations. We may, indeed, go further and say that to 
blink the presence of this limited view of moral obliga- 
tion in the Old Testament is to place a serious obstacle 
in the path of religious progress. 

One important source for the study of Israel's moral 
ideas is found in the characters of persons whom they 
idealized, such as Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Samuel, 

1 De offic, III, 6. 

2 Hist, of European Morals (Appleton ed.^ 1870), vol i, p. 239. 



72 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

David, and others. A classic illustration of group mo- 
rality is afforded by the story of Abraham's descent 
into Egypt. ^ To guard against possible danger to him- 
self he tells a lie that involves his wife in dishonor. 
After Pharaoh has enriched Abraham on her account 
with sheep, cattle, asses, camels, and slaves, Jahveh 
compels him to restore Sarah to her husband. Thus 
the clan-god secures to Abraham the practical advan- 
tages of his own deception. The story implies the com- 
mon belief and practice of the time that there is no 
moral obligation which a Hebrew is bound to respect 
in his dealings with a foreigner. The action of Jahveh 
exhibits this moral defect, for he helps Abraham, not 
because he is right, but because he is his client. 

The Elhoist^ narrates the same tradition, but with 
significant evidence of deeper moral feeling. Abime- 
lech here appears as the foreigner who sets off the 
shrewdness and superior divine affiliations of the tribal 
father. Abraham tells the same untruth, but the nar- 
rator seeks to mitigate the fact by pointing out that 
it was a half-truth, or white lie. The attempt to extri- 
cate Abraham from an unethical situation by sophistry 
is not morally defensible, but indicates that the nar- 
rator felt the injustice involved in a lie that proved 
injurious, even though it was only a foreigner who 
suffered. By our moral standard it is Abraham, 
not Abimelech, who owes reparation. Nevertheless, 
Jahveh punishes the man to whom Abraham has 
1 Gen. 12: 10 ff. Q). 2 Gen. 20 (E). 



MORAL CHARACTER OF JAHVEH 73 

"done deeds that ought not to be done/* and then 
humiliates him still more by suggesting that he secure 
the favor of Abraham's intercession; as if the right 
and wrong of the case were of less moment to Jahveh 
than the triumph and enrichment of his client. 
Clearly the Jahveh of this story is far from being a 
guardian of universal moral law. He is a petty and 
partisan tribal god. 

These Abraham stories are by no means exceptional 
in the attitude which they make Jahveh adopt toward 
foreigners. Even greater moral obliquity is exhibited 
in the story that tells how Jacob deceives his blind 
old father, and filches the blessing from Esau, who 
represents the Edomites. Despite falsehood and de- 
ception, so runs the tale, Jahveh espouses the cause 
of Jacob, for it is again the case of an Israelite against 
a foreigner. On the same principle the Israelites, on 
the eve of departure from Egypt, are directed by 
Jahveh to borrow from the Egyptians^ — with the 
concealed intention of keeping what they get! If the 
Israelites had treated their fellow countrymen as 
they treated the Egyptians, they would have offended 
against the moral standard of their time, and been 
subject to Jahveh's displeasure. But the spoiling of 
foreigners was no sin in Jahveh's eyes ; on the contrary, 
we are told that "Jahveh gave the people favour in the 
sight of the Egyptians, so that they let them have 
what they asked. And they despoiled the Egyptians."^ 
1 Ex. 11: 2(E). 2 Ex. 12:35, 36(E). 



I 



74 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

The reaction of a higher morality against the defectn^ 
ethics of such traditions reminds one of the famous 
line of Lucan: "The gods favored the conquering 
cause, but Cato the conquered." 

All this illustrates how the national-god idea worked 
itself out in practical ethics. The conviction that 
Jahveh's acts must always be governed by moral ends, 
and not by racial preferences, had at this time scarcely 
dawned upon the Hebrew mind. They ascribed to 
him some moral characteristics, not a moral character, 
immutable and eternal. In the light of this fact, and 
of their particularism, it is easily seen how they could 
regard Jahveh as guardian of justice and morality in 
Israel, and yet ascribe to him acts and commands 
that were neither just nor moral. 

Unless his mental vision is dimmed by a false doc- 
trine of Scripture a discerning reader of the Old Testa- 
ment will soon perceive that in these stories he really 
discovers the early Israelite painting his own ethical 
portrait as that of Jahveh. It is he, not Jahveh, whose 
moral character lacks coherence, whose acts are often 
immoral and unjust, whose humanity has racial and 
geographical limits, and whose religion still is honey- 
combed with unreason and superstition. 

If this be true, what was the consequence? It follov/s 
that for every Israelite who took these stories to be 
objectively true, they provided existing practices with 
divine approvals. It involved the assumption that 
Jahveh's will coincided with Israel's national customs 



MORAL CHARACTER OF JAHVEH 75 

and morals; that he was the guardian of Israel's social 
order as it was, and that only an infraction of that 
order was an infraction of his will. It meant that the 
average Israelite was enabled to contemplate his own 
very imperfect ethical ideals as God's ideals. Against 
this comfortable conception of Jahveh's character and 
demands Amos and Hosea were the first to hurl passion- 
ate denials. Under the moral revolution which they 
inaugurated the stories which we have considered 
not only became unbelievable, but scandalously and 
wickedly untrue. It was Jeremiah who wrote, **Take 
heed every one of his neighbour, and trust ye not in 
any brother; for every hr other will play Jacob's tricks^ 
and every neighbour will go about with slanders." ^ 

Jahveh's relation to his own worshippers is a sub- 
ject which must next engage our attention. The early 
documents assume the existence of a covenant rela- 
tionship between Jahveh and his people. This means 
an agreement in which both parties pledged themselves 
to do certain things. The ceremony of "cutting" a 
covenant could hardly be cruder than it appears in 
the JE account of the covenant made with Abraham. 
When darkness had fallen, Jahveh passed as a flame 
between the severed carcasses of the animals, and so 
ratified his part of the covenant. The ceremony sug- 
gests the self-imposition of a curse for failure to fulfil 
the agreement. An alliance made on these terms with 

* Jer. 9 -.4; cf. vs. 3. The Hebrew words translated in the R.V. "shall 
utterly supplant" undoubtedly are a censuring allusion to Jacob's 
trickeries, for they are a word-play on his name. 



76 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

a divinity must strike a modern mind as something 
strange and primitive. Yet the covenant idea is fun- 
damental in Israel's religion, and when one takes the 
sources of the idea into account, it becomes clear that 
up to a certain point it rendered moral service. But 
some of the forms in which it still survives in Christian 
thought must be reckoned among the superannuated 
rudiments of religion. 

Among nomads, relations between individuals or 
groups were regulated by covenant. Those made be- 
tween Abraham and Abimelech, and Jacob and Laban, 
may serve as examples. In each case Jahveh was made 
third party to the covenant, for it devolved upon the 
clan-deity to see that the principals observed the cov- 
enant after they had separated and could not hold 
each other to account; as Laban puts it, "Jahveh 
watch [and intervene if necessary] between me and 
thee when we are separated one from another."^ The 
blood of the sacrificial victims sealed the compact. 

The covenant-guarding is also a covenant-making 
deity. The covenant ceremony between Jahveh and 
Israel is narrated by the Elohist. Moses sprinkles the 
blood of the sacrificial victims upon both parties to 
the contract,^ — upon the people, who are regarded as 
a collective unit, and upon Jahveh, who is represented 
by the altar. Here, as always, the object of the cove- 
nant was the preservation and prosperity of the politi- 

* Gen. 31:49 (J). Inexact rendering of one word by "absent" has 
caused the verse generally to be misunderstood. 
2 Ex. 24: 3-8 (E). 



MORAL CHARACTER OF JAHVEH 77 

cal group which was believed to depend almost entirely 
upon the favor of the national deity. The way to 
secure his favor was to observe carefully the provis- 
ions of "the book of the covenant," ^ with respect to 
which the people bound themselves to do *'all that 
Jahveh hath spoken." 

Examination of the Book of the Covenant, Exodus 
20:22-23:33, shows that it was a brief digest of cus- 
tomary laws concerning compensations for injury, 
debtors, slaves, homicide, and numerous other issues 
that were liable to arise in the life of an ancient com- 
munity. Mixed with them are directions regarding 
religious festivals, sacrifice, and some ritual taboos. 
The collection of "ordinances" exhibits that absence 
of differentiation between various kinds of laws which 
is characteristic of clan-custom. Considering the time 
to which they belong, most of them show a fine quality 
of simple justice. But a considerable number are un- 
questionably immoral, judged by the standard of mo- 
rality common to most civilized people. Some in fact 
were judged to be wrong or unjust by the Deuterono- 
mists a century later, for they abrogated or modified 
them in the new code which they drew up. Yet both 
the original laws and the contradictory, or divergent, 
new ones were set forth as " the ordinances of Jahveh." 

Any act, then, which was contrary to the will of 
the national god expressed in the covenant-ordinances 
was simultaneously a political and a religious offence, 

» Ex. 24: 7. 



78 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

a breach of the covenant which guaranteed political 
security and prosperity to the nation. Before the 
Israelites entered Palestine, a writer of the Amarna 
letters used the Hebrew word for **sin" to describe an 
act of disloyalty to the king of which he had been 
accused. In repudiating the charge he protested that 
he was ** righteous," using the word in the sense of 
loyal. It follows that loyalty to the gods and loyalty 
to the king were indistinguishable to the writers of the 
Amarna letters. The righteous man was the loyal man 
who conformed to the usage of the group ; and since 
a covenant between a man and his deity involved 
mutual obligations, the covenant-loyalty of the deity 
came to be regarded as his righteousness. There are 
clear traces of both these conceptions in the Old Tes- 
tament. We must assume, therefore, that among the 
Hebrews, as among the Canaanites, ideas of right- 
eousness and sin have arisen out of their social order 
and so share its moral excellence and defects. 

The usage of the group to which the ancient Israelite 
was expected to conform was by no means of one piece, 
as has been pointed out. Besides the fundamental 
social duties there was a large mass of observances 
which had for their object protection against super- 
natural dangers. They concerned, in the main, a man's 
relation to the **holy '* and the "unclean." The reader 
should disabuse himself at once of the notion that 
these terms, from the earliest Hebrew antiquity, re- 
ferred to moral purity and impurity. In the early 



MORAL CHARACTER OF JAHVEH 79 

literature they mostly refer to customs and things 
that have nothing to do with morality. We are in the 
realm, here, of Semitic taboos. 

A taboo may be roughly described as something 
that one must not do lest ill befall. After touching a 
corpse, or the blood of a sacrifice, or handling objects 
connected with the sanctuary, one has to observe cer- 
tain precautions. ' ' Holiness ' ' and ' * uncleanness ' ' were 
believed to be catching like a contagious disease* Thus 
one person might communicate the unpleasant con- 
sequences of his act to the whole community. There- 
fore, the breaking of a taboo, whether by accident or 
design, was a "sin," and as such prejudicial to the 
welfare of the community. It was every one's concern 
to wipe out such a sin, and it was usually done by 
wiping out the sinner. The mysterious contagion of 
Achan's violated taboo was supposed to have spread to 
everything about him ; so the Israelites killed not only 
him, but his entire family and his domestic animals. 
This was believed to destroy the source of the con- 
tagion. 

Even in connection with Jahveh the term **holy" 
often describes anything but an ethical quality. It 
seems at times to indicate simply the inapproachable- 
ness of Jahveh and the resentment which he mani- 
fests when men violate his etiquette of approach. He 
is represented as having slain seventy men of Beth- 
shemesh "because they had looked into the ark." A 
glossator did not consider the casualty list in propor- 



8o THE OLD TESTAMENT 

tion to the sin committed, so he added fifty thousand 
more. Then the men of Beth-shemesh asked, *'Who 
is able to stand before Jahveh, this holy God?" ^ 

Most early societies had regulations against witch- 
craft. The Covenant Code, also, provided that a 
sorceress is not to be suffered to live. Sorcery was be- 
lieved to consist in leaguing one*s self with some su- 
pernatural power to effect selfish ends inimical to the 
general welfare. Therefore, the same penalty was pro- 
vided as for the worship of another deity: ^'He that 
sacrificeth to any god save Jahveh only, shall be utterly 
destroyed." ^ The thought of our time classifies such 
matters as harmless superstitions and thereby takes 
them entirely out of the category of sin. Failure to 
recognize them as remnants of old superstitions has 
frequently made the Bible an instrument in the per- 
petuation of such atrocities as the witch-burnings of 
England and Scotland, and the hangings which fol- 
lowed a witchcraft delusion in Massachusetts. 

The food taboos constitute another large group of 
regulations that illustrate one phase of the Hebrew 
idea of sin. Many of them are of complex and obscure 
origin. They prevailed during the entire Old Testa- 
ment period. Some animals probably became forbid- 
den food because they figured prominently in foreign 
cults. Others must have acquired their uncanny 

* I Sam. 6: 19, 20. The LXX has a clause which gives a different 
and even less reasonable occasion for Jahveh 's anger, viz., that "the 
sons of Jeconiah did not rejoice with the men of Beth-shemesh when 
they looked upon the ark of Jahveh." 

2 Ex. 22: 18, 20. 



MORAL CHARACTER OF JAHVEH 8i 

character through connection with totemism. In short, 
these taboos represent a mass of more or less evapo- 
rated beliefs that have lost the freshness of their early 
meanings. As a class they also belong in the realm of 
superstition. Jesus said, *' There is nothing from with- 
out the man, that going into him can defile him.'* Yet 
to violate any of these taboos was, according to He- 
brew ideas, a sin. It rendered a man " unclean,*' and 
consequently an object of displeasure to the deity. 

Being external and mechanical, such sins were 
purged away by an external and mechanical ritual. In 
a system in which even sins committed unwittingly 
had to be accounted for, there could be no call to real 
repentance, no appeal to the individual conscience. 
The sacrificial ritual, and some external forms of 
abasement, were men's chief dependence to secure 
atonement. It is a significant fact that the denuncia- 
tion of such mechanical means of atonement by the 
prophets was accompanied by new ideas of what con- 
stituted sin in the eyes of God. 

Two things stand out clearly from the discussion of 
these taboos : — 

I. The early Old Testament idea of sin has long 
ceased to be coextensive with ours. Many things de- 
scribed as "holy," or ** unclean," have nothing to do 
with truth or falsehood, good or bad. On the other 
hand, certain social institutions, like polygamy and 
slavery, about which the Israelites had no moral 
scruples, now lie under strong moral condemnation in 



82 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

all civilized countries. Within the Old Testament, also, 
the two concepts of righteousness and sin underwent 
considerable change, especially after the activity of 
the prophets began. 

2. The guilt which a man was believed to incur by 
violating a taboo was of a mysterious physical kind, 
which could be communicated, like a disease, by con- 
tagion or infection. Unless it was checked by some 
act of purgation, the pollution generated by one man's 
act might spread through the entire social group and 
render every member sinful in the eyes of God. Ap- 
parently the very element which we have found to be 
a meaningless superstition, in the Hebrew conception 
of sin, is the thing upon which the doctrines of original 
sin and total depravity are founded. It can hardly be 
anything else, ultimately, than the infection-idea of 
sin, brought over from the Old Testament, which Paul 
sets forth in the fifth chapter of Romans when he says 
that '* through the one man's [Adam's] disobedience 
the many were made sinners." Adam's sin was the 
violation of a food taboo, such as a purely moral con- 
ception of God would exclude from his acts and pur- 
poses. Let it be observed that the idea of collective 
responsibility, also a survival from primitive times, 
continued to play a part in this complex of ideas. 

We have reached the point where the idea of col- 
lective responsibility and that of the physical com- 
municability of sin merge in the idea of collective 
guilt and punishment. Many a pious soul has been 



MORAL CHARACTER OF JAHVEH 83 

troubled by such questions as, Why did God destroy 
not only adults in the Flood, but all children and 
animals? They surely deserved a better fate! ^'All 
flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth," ^ 
answers the priestly writer. Collective guilt, collect- 
ive responsibility, sin diffused like a leaven through the 
whole lump — all expressed in one phrase! From the 
point of view of antiquity we have here a sufficient 
justification for God's indiscriminating destruction of 
"all flesh.'* The ancients were not often troubled by 
the feeling that wholesale catastrophes, which swept 
away entire populations, could not be regarded as 
divine punishments without impugning the justice of 
God. 

But their answer no longer suffices us. Even if 
science and historical criticism had not demonstrated 
that the Flood described in Genesis can never have 
taken place, we should on moral grounds have to 
discard it as a punitive act of God. Long adherence 
to the principle that righteousness, sin, and punish- 
ment can concern only the individual, has made the 
idea of collective responsibility appear barbarous. In 
fact, the Hebrews themselves began to outgrow these 
ideas about the time of the Babylonian exile. 

But there are indications even in J that the ancient 
Israelite doubted at times whether God was always 
just when he punished men collectively. Abraham, 
arguing with Jahveh before the destruction of Sodom 

1 Gen. 6:12. 



84 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

and Gomorrah, says: ''That be far from thee to do 
after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked, 
that so the righteous should be as the wicked; that be 
far from thee: shall not the Judge of all the earth do 
right? "^ What lies behind the question but the fear 
that God may not always discriminate between the 
good and the bad in his wholesale inflictions of punish- 
ment. The very assumption of the Jahvistic writer, 
that God may be argued into justice by reminding him 
of his obligations as a judge, shows absence of Amos' 
assurance about a God whose justice is an inner neces- 
sity of his being, and as unvarying as the law of gravity. 
Readers of the dialogue between Jahveh and Abra- 
ham will observe that Abraham's anxiety concerns 
only adults. A modern must feel that the presence of 
children in those cities should have raised much the 
more serious question of justice in connection with 
their destruction. Yet claims of the children's right- 
eousness are not advanced. Why? First, because the 
"righteousness" under consideration still is largely if 
not entirely forensic. It could be predicated only of 
those who discharged the political and religious ob- 
ligations on behalf of the family — the heads of fami- 
lies. Secondly, because children were not independent 
persons. They were property in a narrower sense even 
than women. The writer naively assumes for Jahveh 
the feeling and practice of his time, which regarded 
children up to the age of puberty as property. Con- 
» Gen. 18:25. 



MORAL CHARACTER OF JAHVEH 85 

sequently what happened to them was considered only 
in the light of its effect upon the owner, the head of the 
family. Here, indeed, we are at the source of such no- 
tions as that Jahveh could command Abraham to 
sacrifice his son, the first-born being the best of a man's 
alienable possessions. 

This discussion of morals and God in the early litera- 
ture of Israel has been confined somewhat closely to 
those features which serve best as a background for 
the new conceptions advanced by the prophets. It 
would be easy to brighten the picture which we have 
drawn by citing those instances in which the higher 
conceptions of God and duty came to expression. Had 
there not been a substratum of ethical and spiritual 
qualities in the life of the people, the prophets could 
not have appealed to their hearers as they did. But 
there also was so much unreason and superstition in 
the early religion, so much that is unworthy of the de- 
fence which it still enjoys among persons who are more 
zealous than informed, that we have thought best in 
this chapter to prepare its most harmful features for 
slaughter by the prophets. We are now with Amos 
and Hosea at the turn of the road that leads to morally 
higher and rationally more tenable views. 

We have not said anything in this chapter about the 
decalogue. If one adopts the Mosaic origin of the 
decalogue in the form in which it has come down to us, 
it should have received consideration in the chapter on 
Moral Beginnings. But the evidence indicates that 



86 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

the form in which we have it is the form which it as- 
sumed at the end of a long development. In view of 
the fact that some of its precepts are undoubtedly 
very ancient, bridging the period between the pre- 
Mosaic era and that of the exile, we feel justified in 
taking up the decalogue separately in the next chap- 
ter. By doing this we are afforded an opportunity to 
discuss in greater detail certain fundamental features 
of Hebrew morality, together with the changes that 
took place. 



CHAPTER IV 

ORIGIN AND MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE 
DECALOGUE 

Among the earliest aids to memory used by the an- 
cients were ten-finger memorials, or decalogues. They 
were formularies employed to summarize those duties 
and practices upon which the conscience of the social 
group laid most emphasis. The makers and codifiers 
of Israel's laws likewise made use of this device. But 
no social conscience ever was, or can be, static in its 
content, and that of Israel was no exception. 

The almost unanimous testimony of human experi- 
ence shows that the lawmaker does not precede, but 
follows, the developing social conscience. What the 
lawgiver enacts into formal precept or law must pre- 
viously have proved its worth in the collective ex- 
perience, otherwise it would have no binding force. 

In the light of considerations like these the search 
for a definite chronological origin of the decalogue 
looks like a mistake of method induced by the view 
that a Hebrew lawgiver, in Old Testament ethics, 
could make eight o'clock into noon by pushing the 
hands of the clock around. Indeed, the attempt to 
find a precise place for the origin of the decalogue in 
the moral development of the Hebrews seems futile. 
Belief in its Mosaic origin in any of the forms in which 



88 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

it has come down to us may be regarded as abandoned 
by most Old Testament scholars.^ Further investiga- 
tion, we believe, will establish as certain that the dec- 
alogue embodies within itself the products of different 
developments of divers origins. In other words, the 
decalogue did not spring into existence full-grown, like 
Minerva from the head of Jove, but is itself the out- 
come of a long and complex development. That com- 
mands against the use of images in worship and against 
stealing should have arisen simultaneously is incredi- 
ble to a student of ethical origins. 

A little reflection will show that it is only some form 
or arrangement of the decalogue, not the origination 
of the ethical obligations it expresses, that could at 
best be attributed to Moses. The wrong of murder, 
theft, false witness, and adultery required no special 
revelation even in his day. Such acts had been pe- 
nalized in the Hammurabi Code a thousand years 
earlier, and are among the commonplaces of prayers 
and confessions in other early literature of Egypt and 
Babylonia. Hebrew tradition itself assumed that the 
religion of Jahveh had stigmatized such acts as sins 
from the remotest antiquity. ^ Their condemnation as 

* Addis, Baentsch, Barton, Bennett, Benzlnger, Bertholet, Budde, 
S. A. Cook, Cornill, Guthe, Holzinger, Kuenen, McNeile, Marti, 
Matthes, Montefiore, G. F. Moore, Oort, Paton, Smend, W. R. Smith, 
H. P. Smith, Stade, Steuernagel, Thomas, Wellhausen, and doubtless 
many others. 

2 Rabbinical tradition met the difficulty by assuming the existence 
of the seven so-called Noachian laws, six of which were supposed to 
have been enjoined upon Adam. Among them are five prohibitions of 
the decalogue, nos. 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7. 



ORIGIN OF THE DECALOGUE 89 

wrongs committed against the social group must have 
attended the earliest manifestations of the moral in- 
stinct even in the man of the stone age. 

The disposition of Hebrew bibliographers to ascribe 
the origins of their social and religious institutions to 
Moses has a reverse as well as an obverse side. If they 
dated later origins back to him, they probably also 
dated some earlier origins up to him. The separate 
history of individual precepts of the decalogue cer- 
tainly reaches beyond Moses and beyond Jahvism. 
But with respect to the entire decalogue it would be 
much more daring than true to assume that there was 
a sufficiently long pre-Mosaic Hebrew moral develop- 
ment to have made possible the compilation of such 
a set of precepts by Moses in the fourteenth or thir- 
teenth century B.C. 

Besides, there is evidence which indicates that the 
process of instituting and compiling decalogues has 
been gradual and changeful. The religion of Israel 
knew more than one decalogue, and at least two variant 
editions of the same decalogue. As early as the fifth 
century a.d. an anonymous Greek theologian ^ credited 
Moses with the writing of two decalogues, one in the 
twentieth, the other in the thirty-fourth chapter of 
Exodus. Since then others have noted the existence of 
these two completely dissimilar sets of ten command- 
ments. The German poet Goethe was one who dis- 
covered the fact during his student days, and made it 
1 Cf. Nestle, Miscelkn, ZAW (1904), p. 134. 



90 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

the subject of his inaugural disputation, maintaining 
that the thirty-fourth chapter of Exodus contained 
the original ten commandments. The faculty at Strass- 
burg refused to publish his dissertation, so he em- 
bodied the substance of his discovery in an anonymous 
article two years later. ^ 

The most striking characteristic of the above-men- 
tioned decalogue is its ritual character. We shall there- 
fore refer to it as the ritual decalogue, to distinguish 
it from the standard decalogue, which is chiefly moral. 
Some have found evidence of superior age in the simple 
fact that the former does concern itself with ritual. 
But this fact is not a safe criterion of age, for the ele- 
ments of social morality must have arisen at least as 
early as most of the surviving ceremonial regulations. 
Nor is the fact of its inclusion in the J document more 
than presumptive evidence of antiquity. More fruit- 
ful is the enquiry how early ethical, rather than ritual, 
requirements were held to be of the essence of religion. 
The answer to this question cannot be doubtful. The 
change of emphasis from the ritual to the ethical in 
Israel's religion was effected by the prophets of the 
eighth century. Therefore the ethical decalogue is cer- 
tainly the more recent. 

Examined in detail the precepts of the ritual dec- 
alogue are found to have a background of agricultural 
life. The most important observances of the peasant 
religion of Palestine were included among these pre- 
1 Zwei wichtige Usher unerorterte Fragen, 1773. 



ORIGIN OF THE DECALOGUE 91 

cepts. The chapter in question expressly mentions 
**ten words." ^ Since this decalogue now contains 
twelve or thirteen commandments we must suppose 
that it has undergone editing by later hands. Omit- 
ting, as the most probable additions, the Sabbath com- 
mandment, and the one requiring all Hebrew males 
to appear before Jahveh thrice a year, the following 
list 2 results: — 

1. Thou shalt not prostrate thyself before any other 

god. 

2. Thou shalt make thee no molten gods. 

3. Thou shalt keep the feast of unleavened bread. 

4. Every first-born is mine. 

5. The feast of weeks thou shalt observe. 

6. And the feast of ingathering at the turn of the 

year. 

7. Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with 

leaven. 

8. The offering of the Passover shall not be left 

until the morning. 

9. The best of the firstlings of thy ground thou shalt 

bring to the house of Jahveh thy God. 
ID. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk. 
No one familiar with the religion of the great prophets 
from Amos to Jeremiah would consider this decalogue 

1 Ex. 34:28. 

^ Some omit the Sabbath commandment and no. 2 on the ground 
that these do not occur in what looks like a repetition of this decalogue 
in Ex. 23: 10-19; still others seek to preserve the number ten by omit- 
ting nos. 5 and 6, and retaining the Sabbath commandment and the 
one requiring males to appear before Jahveh thrice a year. 



92 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

a summary of the cardinal points of their preach- 
ing. On the contrary, observances of the ritual de- 
nounced by these prophets are here singled out for 
special enforcement. It can, therefore, hardly have 
originated in religious circles to which Amos and 
Isaiah belonged. On the other hand, the importance 
attached to agricultural festivals (nos. 3, 5, and 6) 
makes it certain that this decalogue cannot have 
originated with Moses. Such commands would have 
been worse than meaningless to nomads, who not only 
had no experience of agriculture, but despised it as a 
mode of life. For details upon this aspect of the prob- 
lem the reader is referred to the chapter on Israel's 
Moral Beginnings. 

There falls into the scale as an additional considera- 
tion the fact that the command, "All that open the 
womb are mine," was understood to involve child 
sacrifice. This is shown by the later practice of sub- 
stituting an animal, by the continuance of child sac- 
rifice until Jeremiah's time, by the latter's express 
repudiation of it as a command of Jahveh, as well as 
by Ezekiel's acceptance of it as such, and by the arch- 
aeological evidence of recent excavations in Palestine. 
Even defenders of the traditional Mosaic authorship of 
the Pentateuch might be willing, one would suppose, 
to clear Moses of any share in the giving of such a 
decalogue. Its character is best explained by suppos- 
ing it to be a modified survival of that peasant religion 
of Palestine which was a blending of Israelite and 



ORIGIN OF THE DECALOGUE 93 

Canaanite cults — a mixture against which the eighth- 
century prophets and the Deuteronomists waged such 
a relentless war. Indeed, the conclusion of the Deu- 
teronomic edition of the decalogue, with the statement 
that Jahveh ''added no more,"^ may have been in- 
tended to discredit other and differing forms of the 
decalogue which were known to exist. It must not be 
supposed, however, that the Jahvist originated the 
ritual decalogue which now bears his name. On the 
contrary, literary criticism shows that he found it a 
part of the tradition which came to him out of the 
past. 

Turning now to the two variant forms of the stand- 
ard decalogue, preserved in Ex, 20 : 1-17 and Dt. 5 : 
1-22, we are bound to raise the question of its origin. 
The tendency of recent critical investigations is to 
regard this decalogue as an original part neither of 
Deuteronomy nor of E in Exodus. The evidence, best 
summarized by Steuernagel, indicates that it was first 
inserted by an editor in the fifth chapter of Deuter- 
onomy, and that after the exile a P redactor inserted 
it in the JE narrative between Ex. 19 : 25 and 20 : 18. 
The time of its inclusion in the Book of Deuteronomy, 
however, is not necessarily the date of its origin. We 
shall find reason to think that this ethical decalogue, 
also, has had a long history, in which it passed through 
various stages. Its present form may not be earlier than 
the Deuteronomic period, but it probably contains a 

» Dt. 5:22. 



94 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

substantial nucleus which is very much older. Be- 
sides the two variant forms of the decalogue, mentioned 
above, there is a third which stands about midway be- 
tween the two. It was found on a papyrus fragment in 
Egypt a few years ago. Cook ^ assigns it to the early 
part of the second century a.d. 

Before taking up the discussion of the individual 
precepts of the decalogue two general questions should 
receive consideration: (i) Were all or particular per- 
sons in the Hebrew community addressed in the dec- 
alogue? (2) Were the precepts supposed to have a 
universal, or only a tribal and national range of ap- 
plication? 

A number of considerations indicate that the deca- 
logue is addressed only to adult men, and more partic- 
ularly to those who were heads of households. The 
second person masculine singular is employed in 
"thou shalt,** but this grammatical fact cannot be 
urged here, because the masculine gender in Hebrew 
may be employed to cover both sexes. More heavily 
weighs the fact that some commands, like the fourth, 
seventh, and tenth, contemplate men only. Since 
women were not held competent to qualify as wit- 
nesses, or to exercise the religious rites and functions 
of the Hebrew cultus, the first, second, third, and 
ninth, also, are addressed to men. The Hebrew legal 
regime was one in which men alone figured, because 

1 PSBA XXV, p. 34 ff. The writing is in an early form of Hebrew 
character. Though only a fragment, it is the earliest Biblical manu- 
script of any kind in existence. 



ORIGIN OF THE DECALOGUE 95 

women were owned and had no independent social 
responsibility. Analogous, among the ancient Arabs, 
is the case of the ten commandments of the Fitra, 
which, as Wellhausen observes, "appear to have con- 
cerned only the man, not the woman." ^ 

There can be no doubt that the observance of the deca- 
logue was at first obligatory only among Hebrews and 
in so far as it related to Hebrews. They alone could be 
expected to receive and observe commands relating 
to Israel's cultus. Nor did foreign peoples come within 
the purview of its social benefits until Hebrew religion 
ceased to be national. In other words, the morality 
of the decalogue was at first a group morality, since 
the "neighbour "was always understood to be a fellow 
Hebrew. The facts upon which these statements rest 
are abundantly set forth in other connections, and 
need not detain us here. We are ready now to con- 
sider the different commandments individually. 

I. Thou shall have no other gods besides me. 

The first four commandments relate to the cultus. 
This fact must be taken into account if one seeks to 
assign an earlier origin to the ritual decalogue because 
it is so exclusively concerned with the cultus. It is, as 
a matter of fact, only a preponderant emphasis upon 
morals that distinguishes the moral from the ritual 
decalogue. If the moral decalogue were concerned ex- 
clusively with morals, as the ritual decalogue is con- 

» Reste ardb. Heid. (1897), p. 168. 



96 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

cerned exclusively with the cultus, it might be possible 
to maintain that the two decalogues were contempo- 
raneous; that one was intended to inculcate the duties 
of worship, the other, of social morality. As the facts 
stand this claim could be maintained only by suppos- 
ing that the ritual decalogue was a possession of the 
Canaanite population absorbed by the Hebrews after 
the conquest, and that the standard decalogue goes 
back to distinctively Hebrew origins. But since Ca- 
naanite civilization was much more ancient than 
Israel's religion, the ritual decalogue would still be 
the older in point of origin. 

The prohibition of the worship of other gods ob- 
viously does not constitute monotheism, but monola- 
try. The framers of this decalogue did not question 
the actual existence of other gods. Otherwise they 
would have declared their unreality to clinch the inter- 
diction of their worship. If worshipped by Israelites, 
they become real rivals of Jahveh and thus excite his 
jealousy. Jealousy aroused by a nonentity is a thing 
too absurd to consider. The motive of jealousy is 
introduced as an amplification of the second com- 
mandment, but really concerns the first. The naive 
endowing of God with such an ignoble passion has 
moral difficulties of its own with which we have dealt 
elsewhere. 

Monotheism, even in Hebrew thought, came by 
stages, and not as a flash from the blue. To some of 
these stages we have called attention in the chapter on 



ORIGIN OF THE DECALOGUE 97 

the Monojahvism of Deuteronomy. It is a question 
whether even Jeremiah had fully grasped the truth of 
God's universality, although it lies implicit in his 
thought. Men who for the first time consciously attain 
to a new conception of God and the world are accus- 
tomed to enlarge upon the fact. Had the thought of 
Jahveh's sole existence not been a novel idea to Deu- 
tero- Isaiah he would hardly have exploited it with so 
much enthusiasm during the exile. 

However, the form of the first commandment was 
found sufficiently elastic to admit of a monotheistic 
interpretation after monotheism had become an ac- 
complished fact. Judaism had recourse to the Shema ^ 
*'Hear, O Israel, Jahveh our God is one Jahveh," as 
a better formula for its belief. But it should be ob- 
served that the Jews do not follow the text of the pas- 
sage, since in liturgical use they substitute "Adonay" 
(Lord) for the ineffable name "Jahveh." This change 
really makes of the Shema a statement of monotheism, 
and the King James version adopted this interpreta- 
tion in its rendering: ''Hear, O Israel, the Lord our 
God is one Lord.** But, historically considered, the 
first commandment, as well as the Shema, are products 
of a time when other gods still were realities to the 
average Israelite. The first commandment asserts 
that Israel's God demands exclusive devotion, while 
the Shema asserts that Jahveh is not many, but one. 

* Dt. 6:4. So called from the opening word in Hebrew for "Hear." 



98 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

2. Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image. 

The ritual decalogue prohibited only "molten im- 
ages," i.e., images of metal cast in a mould by a founder. 
The term in Hebrew is massekdh; both the name and 
the thing were probably borrowed from the Canaanites. 
The standard decalogue prohibits the graven image, 
or pes el, which was commonly made of wood. 

Both kinds of images were used in ancient Israel 
without offence, and without betraying any con- 
sciousness that Moses had forbidden them. Micah 
the Danite is represented as employing a descendant 
of Moses, even, to perform the duties of a priest of 
Jahveh and as such he operates with a molten as well 
as with a carved image. ^ Another tradition mentions a 
teraphim in the house of David as if it had been some- 
thing unobjectionable that could be found in any 
Israelite household. ^ Rachel stole her father's tera- 
phim and Laban, in seeking to recover the image, re- 
ferred to it as '*my god." ^ A passage in Hosea alludes 
with evident regret to a time when the sacred stone 
pillars, ephods, and teraphim would be unknown in 
Israel.* He regarded them as essential to the religious 

observances of his people. 

/3 

1 Judg. 17; cf. 18:30. 21 Sam. 19:9/. 

3 Gen. 31:19, 30. Some regard the teraphim as a relic of ancestor 
worship corresponding to the penates, or household gods of the Romans. 
Gressmann advocates the view that the teraphim was a mask worn by 
the priest when he impersonated the deity (Mose u. seine Zeity p. 249). 
Whatever it was, its character and use should have put it under the 
ban of image worship on the supposition of a Mosaic origin of the second 
commandment. 

^ Hos. 3:4. Deuteronomy condemned them all as idolatrous. 



ORIGIN OF THE DECALOGUE 99 

But the most conclusive evidence against a Mosaic 
prohibition of images is afforded by the incident of the 
bronze serpent. The Deuteronomic editor of the Books 
of Kings, ^ in recording the destruction of the serpent as 
an idolatrous object, declares it was the one "that 
Moses had made." An E redactor in Numbers ^ nar- 
rates that Moses made it in obedience to the command 
of Jahveh. Tradition is concerned here, doubtless, 
with a symbol employed after the manner of sympa- 
thetic magic. But it must be clear that an age which 
could see nothing wrong in ascribing the origin of such 
an object to Moses had no such scruples about the use 
of images as would have been created by the second 
commandment. 

Finally, the state religion of Ephraim countenanced 
the representation of Jahveh by portable images of a 
bull overlaid with gold, contemptuously called ** golden 
calves" by the prophets. Such images constituted the 
principal equipment of the great Israelitish sanctuaries 
at Dan, Bethel, Samaria, and probably Gilgal. Juda- 
ites participated more or less in the cultus at Bethel. 
If Amos and Hosea had been aware of a Mosaic pro- 
hibition of images, it is difficult to account for their 
failure to invoke its aid in their campaign against 
these bull images, especially [since Amos appeals to 
the Mosaic period in support of his antisacrificial 
views. 

In our opinion this array of facts points clearly in the 

1 II Kings. 18:4. * Num. 21: 8. 



100 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

direction of a post- Mosaic origin of the commandment 
against images. It also accounts for the consciousness 
of novelty which informs the Deuteronomist^s elab- 
orate argument on behalf of an imageless worship. ^ 
It should be observed, on general grounds, that a pro- 
hibition against images would not be issued in advance 
of a people's practical acquaintance with their use. 
Such a prohibition must have come as the product of a 
religious reaction. We probably are close to the facts 
if we seek the beginning of this reaction in the work 
of the eighth-century prophets, and its culmination 
in Deuteronomy. 

But there may be truth in the Deuteronomist's 
assumption that the earliest form of Jahvism was 
imageless. It is generally conceded that the employ- 
ment of images of gods belongs to a comparatively 
advanced stage in the history and development of re- 
ligion. In so far Eusebius was right when he said that 
*'the oldest peoples had no idols." But it would be 
difficult to prove that the Israelites, or any part of 
them, were in the aniconic stage of development in the 
days of Moses, especially since they were surrounded 
by peoples who had long been familiar with the use of 
images. In any case a religion that is imageless be- 
cause it is primitive, and one that is imageless because 
of advanced theoretical considerations, are two totally 
different things. 

1 Dt. 4:i2jf. 



ORIGIN OF THE DECALOGUE loi 

3. Thou shall nol take the name of Jahveh, thy God, in 
vain. 

This is the common English rendering of the third 
commandment, but the Hebrew text leaves the door 
open for other interpretations. Literally translated it 
reads, ''Thou shalt not lift up the name of Jahveh, thy 
God, unto naught." What does this mean? The an- 
swers vary greatly. Here are some: that it prohibits 
the use of the name of Jahveh in connection with triv- 
ial matters ; that it is directed against profane swear- 
ing; that it forbids the use of the divine name in magic, 
or divination. f fUvw-u^A^ 

The above are the most plausible of the current in- 
terpretations, but they are all open to serious objec- 
tions. Paton ^ has made out a strong case for the view 
that the Hebrew text of the commandment should be 
translated, ''Thou shalt not cry aloud the name of 
Jahveh, thy God, when thou bringest naught." It was 
customary to invoke the name of the deity in connec- 
tion with an offering, and this, in Old Testament 
phraseology, was "to call upon the name of Jahveh." ^ 
The original intention of the third commandment, 
then, would have been to set up the rule. No sacrifice, 
no worship, which accords substantially with the old 
injunction "None shall appear before me empty." ^ 

If this was the original meaning and purpose of the 
third commandment, it hardly reflects the mind of the 

1 JBL (1903), p. 201 ff, 2 I Kings 18:23 Jf.; cf. Ps. 16:4. 

' Ex. 34:20. 



102 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

great pre-exilic prophets who scorned the thought that 
sacrifices were the essential element in acceptable wor- 
ship. On the other hand, it must belong to a time when 
heads of families, as in the case of Elkanah, still exer- 
cised the function of sacrifice. After the ritual of sac- 
rifice had become the exclusive prerogative of the 
priesthood, such a commandment addressed to male 
Israelites would have lost much of its original signifi- 
cance. 

Since the Deuteronomic reformation under Josiah 
inaugurated the changes that took the sacrificial cultus 
out of the hands of the common man and made it a 
priestly function, it is conceivable that the third com- 
mandment underwent a corresponding change of 
meaning at that time. The form of the precept and 
the fact that Semitic antiquity was always living at 
close quarters with superstitious dread of deities* 
names, determined the subsequent interpretation of 
the third commandment. At any rate, the belief arose 
that it was directed against all misuse of the divine 
name Jahveh, and this tradition may reach back to 
the Priests* Code, whose influence greatly fostered 
the fear of sacrilege in connection with the use of the 
divine name. 

The early Israelite naively thought that his national 
deity must have a personal name by which he was dis- 
tinguished from other deities. The earlier writings of 
the Old Testament show that there existed no fear of 
its use in worship, or in connection with the affairs 



ORIGIN OF THE DECALOGUE 103 

of daily life. It was natural, however, to invest the di- 
vulging of this name with the same perils and solemni- 
ties which in early human societies attended the giving 
and use of personal names. One's real name is made 
known only to intimates who will not use it in magic 
to the disadvantage of the bearer. Jahveh also makes 
known his name to intimates and votaries only; ac- 
cording to the earliest traditions to the patriarchs,* 
according to E and P for the first time to Moses. ^ 

The witch of Endor, according to the ancient He- 
brew chronicler, had the power to summon the shade 
{elohim = divinity) of Samuel to appear against his will. 
This, supposedly, was done by invoking his name. 
But citing so powerful a being as Jahveh in non-ritual 
connections was regarded as a perilous adventure. 
Amos, in his graphic picture of the lone survivor of the 
family hiding from God's wrath in the innermost part 
of the house, lets him say, *'Hush, do not speak the 
name of Jahveh," ^ lest his attention be attracted and 
worse befall. 

When the earlier and cruder superstitions con- 
nected with the use of the divine name had passed 
away with the institutional innovations of the time 
between Josiah and Ezra, a new kind of awe of the 
Name began to flourish in the soil of Jewish legalism. 
The prohibition of the third commandment probably 
was now applied to all extra-ritual utterance of the 
name Jahveh. So rigid did this taboo of the name 

1 Gen. 4:26; cf. Gen. 6:2-8. * Ex. 3:14; 6:3. ^ Am. 6: 10. 



104 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

become that about 300 B.C. it was no longer uttered 
in Jewish synagogues, the substitute ** Adonay" (Lord) 
being used instead. Leviticus prescribed that ''one 
who blasphemeth the name of Jahveh shall surely be 
put to death." ^ It is a significant fact that in the 
Septuagint Greek translation of the Pentateuch this 
is rendered "one who nameth the name of the Lord 
shall surely be put to death." The inference is that 
to the Jews of the third century B.C. mere utterance of 
the name Jahveh was blasphemy. 

In consequence of this curious development the cor- 
rect vocalization of the four consonants JHVH re- 
mained for a long time a matter of uncertainty;^ 
mystic potencies imputed to the real name of him 
who was no longer a national deity, but the God of 
the world, revived its use in magic practices, and gave 
rise to a kind of philosophy of the Name which may 
be traced into the New Testament.' 

4. Observe (var. remember) the Sabbath day to keep it 
holy. 
Passages in the JE traditions which relate to the 
earlier Sabbath are not entirely free from the suspicion 
of having been edited so as to accommodate them, 
where necessary, to a later form of Sabbath observ- 
ance. The writings of the eighth-century prophets, 

* Lev. 24:16. 

2 Cf. Arnold, JBL (1905), vol. xxiv, p. 107/.; Moore, OTSS, vol. i, 

p. 143/. 
•' Heitmiiller. Im Namen Jesu. 



ORIGIN OF THE DECALOGUE 105 

therefore, contain the earliest undoubted references to 
the Hebrew Sabbath.^ In them it has the earmark of 
a lunar feast-day and is always paired with the new- 
moon festival, an association which it retained also in 
the language of writers who lived after the Sabbath 
had been detached from the moon phases. 

If the Sabbath was originally a real partner of the 
new moon, it means that there was only one Sabbath 
in a month. Otherwise, how could the phrase ''new 
moon and sabbath" originate? The supposition that 
the Sabbath here means the seventh day of the week, 
without reference to moon phases, comes to grief 
against the fact that then the new moon and the 
Sabbath would occasionally have coincided. Neither 
does it commend itself to suppose that the new moon 
was the first and most important of the monthly group 
of four sabbaths determined by the moon phases, for 
then the phrase should have been "new moon and 
sabbaths." What is more, the new moon is nowhere 
called a sabbath, but is always distinguished from it. 
We, therefore, are compelled to look for a monthly 
lunar feast-day, coordinate with the new moon, which 
was called Sabbath. The only other distinctive lunar 
phenomenon of the month was the full moon, and 
our next step must be to enquire whether the day of 
the full moon had special religious significance in Se- 
mitic antiquity. 

Ten years ago Pinches ^ discovered and published a 
1 Am. 8:4/.; Hos. 2: 11; Is. 1 : 13. ' PSBA (1904), p. 55 #• 



io6 THE OLD. TESTAMENT 

lexicographical Babylonian tablet, containing a list of 
the days of the month, in which the term shahattu is 
applied to the fifteenth day of the month. Since the 
Babylonians reckoned a lunar month of about thirty 
days, the middle of the month, or the fifteenth, would 
be the full moon. This is confirmed by a line in the 
Babylonian Story of Creation ^ in which the moon is 
addressed thus: "On the fourteenth [day] thou shalt 
be equal [in both] halves. "^ The testimony of the 
somewhat mutilated line is still stronger if we read 
with Pinches and Zimmern, **0n the Sabbath thou 
shalt be equal in both halves.'* 

What was the character of this day among the Baby- 
lonians? Another cuneiform tablet contains the equa- 
tion dm nilkh libhi = shahattu^ which means, literally 
translated, "day of rest of the heart = sabbath." 
There is general agreement that the phrase which 
describes this sabbath does not refer to cessation from 
labor, but designates it as a day of penance on which 
an angry or capricious deity must be pacified. The 
full-moon period, therefore, was a critical and porten- 
tous day in the astral theology of the Babylonians and 
was known as the "sabbath." The fact that numerous 
existing contract tablets are dated on Babylonian sab- 
baths tends to show that they were not observed as 
rest days. 

On the strength of these facts Meinhold ^ and Beer, ^ 

1 Tablet, v, i8. « So Ungnad in Gressmann's AOTB. 

' Sabbat u. Woche (1905). * Der Mischna-tractat Sabbat, 



ORIGIN OF THE DECALOGUE 107 

following a suggestion of Zimmern, have worked upon 
the theory that the early Hebrew Sabbath was origi- 
nally the day of the full moon, and that it had at 
first nothing to do with the seventh day of rest. There 
is much presumptive evidence in favor of this view, 
and it is not without support in the Old Testament. 
The P tradition in Exodus makes the Hebrews enter 
the wilderness of Sin on the day of the full moon. 
This was the region of Sinai where the full-moon cultus 
still survived among Arabs in the sixth century. The 
fact that Amos mentions the Sabbath of his time as 
a day of cessation from labor and trade is no objection 
to identification with the full moon, for he says the 
same of the new moon. Apparently the celebration 
of both differed in no essential respect from the ob- 
servance of other Hebrew festivals, marked chiefly 
by slaughter-sacrifices and the joyous abandon of the 
accompanying feasts. Such celebrations of necessity 
involved cessation from labor. As Strabo ^ observed, 
"The Greeks and barbarians have this in common, 
that they accompany their sacred rites by a festal 
remission of labor." This accounts for the fact that 
domestic animals and servants were considered avail- 
able for journeys on the Sabbath as well as on the new 
moon. Yet neither a journey^ nor changing of guards 
in the temple^ would have been admissible if rest had 
been the emphatic element in the observance of the 
day. 

» X, 3:9. 2 II Kings, 4:22/. 3 II Kings, 11:4/. 



io8 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

A matter of much significance is the apparently 
hostile attitude of the pre-exilic prophets toward the 
Sabbath of their time. They include it among the 
sacrificial feasts which Jahveh hates. ^ If it was a day 
of rest, its denunciation by these humanitarians is 
hardly intelligible. But if it was a lunar feast-day, 
having a recognized connection with the Babylonian- 
Canaanite astral religion, their hostility is easily ex- 
plained. Since the Book of Deuteronomy represents a 
strong reaction against astral religion, and presents 
the teaching of the prophets in practical form, its com- 
plete omission of the Sabbath, as well as of the new 
moon, from the original edition of the book is a most 
significant fact. It seems to indicate that the rest- 
day Sabbath was still unknown when the book was 
promulgated in 621 B.C., and that the lunar-feast Sab- 
bath celebrated on the full moon was the day de- 
nounced by the prophets. 

The probable relation between the Babylonian full- 
moon Sabbath and the Hebrew rest-day Sabbath has 
been discussed at length by Morris Jastrow.^ He 
finds a close analogy between the Babylonian shabat- 
tum as a critical time in the lunar month, and the 
shabbathon of Lev. 23 : 32, which like the Babylonian 
Sabbath was invested with the austerities of an atone- 
ment day. But he also finds that though there are 
''traces among the Hebrews of lucky and unlucky 

1 Is. i: 13; Hos. 2:11; probably included in Am. 5:21. 

2 Hebrew and Babylonian Traditions (1914), pp. 134-95. 



ORIGIN OF THE DECALOGUE 109 

days, of a significance attached to periods of transition, 
of the importance of the new moon and of the full 
moon, of the special import connected with the number 
seven, and of precautions exercised on certain days 
which have left their traces in some of the Sabbath 
regulations of the Pentateuchal Codes," there was no 
parallel development of the Hebrew rest-Sabbath and 
the Babylonian propitiation-Sabbath on the basis of 
their common elements. The probable reason for this 
we have already indicated. 

Just how the lunar- feast Sabbath was made over 
into the seventh day of rest, dissociated from the 
moon phases, still is obscure. But there were many 
radical changes just before and during the exile, and 
this was one of them. Hardly anything seems to have 
been taken over from the full-moon Sabbath except 
the name. In the observance of the old Sabbath, ab- 
stention from labor was incomplete and incidental to 
the celebration ; in the new Sabbath it was the essential 
thing in the celebration. The Sabbath, for instance, 
was a day suitable for journeys in old Israel; but in 
New Testament times travelling was reckoned among 
the things that were strictly forbidden on the Sab- 
bath. ^ In fact this new Sabbath rapidly underwent 
deterioration from a day of release from labor to one 
on which it was labor to rest as prescribed. The 
Deuteronomic variant of the Sabbath commandment 
urges only humanitarian motives for the day*s ob- 
^ Mt. 24:20; Josephus, Ant. xiii, 8:4. 



no THE OLD TESTAMENT 

servance ; but at the time of Nehemiah it had become 
a kind of ritual requirement, enforced by civil au- 
thority. A later law of P even imposed the death- 
penalty for Sabbath-breaking. The creation-origin of 
the Sabbath was added to the Exodus edition of the 
decalogue as a priestly afterthought. Similarly P, in 
the first chapter of Genesis, arranged the creative 
acts to fit the scheme of a weekly cycle which in his 
day was already an established custom. 

In consequence of post-exilic developments, in which 
the ritual sanctity of the day was increasingly em- 
phasized, it inevitably lost something of its cheerful 
character. The modification of the pre-exilic local 
sacrificial feasts, from joyous social functions into a 
solemn ritual act of the priests at the central sanctu- 
ary, may have helped to inaugurate this tendency 
toward an austere Sabbath. Its sanctity was thought 
of as something inhering in the day itself, which was 
hedged about by a formidable array of enactments that 
in some circles tended to make the day a burden in- 
stead of a refreshment. It was this tendency which 
Jesus challenged when he said that "the sabbath was 
made for man, not man for the sabbath." * 

We may briefly summarize the history of the Sab- 
bath as follows: its origin as far as the name is con- 
cerned goes back to the Sumerians. The Babylonians 
applied the name to the full-moon day in the middle 
of each month and observed it as a propitiation day. 

1 Mk. 2: 27. 



ORIGIN OF THE DECALOGUE in 

The early Israelite Sabbath seems, also, to have been 
a full-moon festival and a day of joyous feasting. As 
such it figured once a month, like the new-moon festi- 
val, in the sacrificial cult us which the pre-exilic proph- 
ets denounced because of its Canaanite associations. 
About the time of the exile a seventh day of rest, 
freed from association with moon phases, was inaugu- 
rated and called the Sabbath, although it had little in 
common with the earlier institution under that name. 

5. Honour thy father and thy mother. 

The fifth commandment inculcates the duty of hon- 
oring one^s parents. In a society founded so com- 
pletely upon family organization as the Hebraic, the 
filial obligation set forth in this precept undoubtedly 
belongs to a time more ancient than that of Moses. 
Indeed, the question must be raised whether in its 
most ancient form it may not have been an injunction 
to pay ritual homage to the manes of dead parents. 

An interesting question arises from the co5rdinate 
mention of the mother with the father. Since the Is- 
raelite family was polygamous, the children all claimed 
the same father, but not the same mother. Add to this 
the fact that the father had absolute power both over 
the mother and the children, and it becomes appa- 
rent that the precept could not have been understood 
to teach equal obligations toward both parents. 

Duty toward stepmothers is not mentioned. Yet it 
was not in the case of Leah and Rachel only that the 



112 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

question of this relationship arose, for the Book of 
Deuteronomy^ attempts to check the abuses of harem- 
favoritism in a duogamous family. Under the condi- 
tions presupposed there, each of the rival wives intri- 
guing to advance the interests of her own offspring, the 
inculcation of filial duty toward a stepmother must 
have seemed a hopeless thing. The omission may re- 
ceive further explanation from the fact that the first- 
born son's stepmothers were anciently inherited by him 
as his wives when his father died, and his duties toward 
them consequently came under a different head. 

Some scholars have maintained that there is suffi- 
cient vestigial evidence to assume the existence of a 
matrilinear society before the beginning of the patri- 
linear. In such a society the duties of filial obligation 
could have had for their object only the mother, since 
the father could not be known. But the Israelite fam- 
ily, so far as one can trace its history, is patrilinear and, 
therefore, it can be a matter of antiquarian interest 
only to inquire whether the mention of the mother be- 
side the father is an echo from a matrilinear period of 
society. 

The commandment has traditionally been under- 
stood to apply to children still under parental au- 
thority. This is clearly an impossible supposition. 
Under the type of family organization known to us in 
Israel the father alone was the absolute ruler of the 
family ; so absolute, in fact, that it took on all the quali- 
1 Dt. 21:15; see p. 247. 



ORIGIN OF THE DECALOGUE 113 

ties of proprietary ownership, for he had the right to 
sell his children into slavery in payment for his debts. 
Actual ownership of the child by the father is the tacit 
assumption behind Jahveh's alleged request that Abra- 
ham sacrifice his son. In a society where children were 
independent persons with inalienable rights, no one 
could ever have raised the question, '* Shall I give my 
first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for 
the sin of my soul?" Obviously the Israelite could sell, 
or offer as a sacrificial gift, only that which he believed 
to be his property. 

If such was the status of the free-born children and 
their mothers, how are we to apply this commandment 
to children born of female slaves whom the head of 
the family treated as concubines? The children of such 
unions, born into slavery, cannot possibly have been 
placed by this precept under equal obligation to both 
parents, since the relation between father and mother, 
and father and children, was that of a master to his 
slaves. The fact is that the power of the Israelite father 
over his family was so unrestrained that a command- 
ment in his interest addressed to children still under 
his authority would have been a bonus on tyranny — 
a killing of the slain. On the whole they needed pro- 
tection against arbitrary exercise of paternal power 
much more than counsels of respect! Custom, ap- 
proved by divine sanction, gave him the right to put 
to death a son who was a drunkard or a spendthrift.* 

* Dt. 21 : 18-21. The transfer of authority to a court is in appearance 



114 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

The right to sell his daughters into concubinage and 
slavery was expressly recognized by the Mosaic Law.^ 
A daughter's failure to acquiesce in her father's desire 
to profit by what even in those days involved for her 
a measure of degradation, would clearly have been a 
breach of the fifth commandment. In short the suppo- 
sition that the fifth commandment was addressed to 
children still under parental control presents insuper- 
able difficulties. 

Let us suppose, however, that the fifth command- 
ment, like the rest, is addressed to adult male Israelites 
only. Then it acquires quite a different significance, 
for the father and mother in question in that case were 
the aged parents of sons who had founded their own 
households and were beyond parental control. A 
woman passed from the control of father, brother, or 
uncle, to that of her husband-master. She had no ini- 
tiative or independent social responsibility, and was 
held incompetent to exercise religious rites and func- 
tions. Therefore the ancient legislator addressed no 
commands to her. Even the wisdom writers invari- 
ably addressed their precepts to sons, never to daugh- 
ters.^ 

Since both the family and the family-cultus were 
perpetuated through sons it was a sacred duty to 
do everything possible to insure the male succession. 
As in Greece, Rome, and India, so also in Israel pa- 
only, since parental complaint is all that is necessary to invoke the 
death penalty. 

1 Ex. 21:7-11. 2 Prov. 4:1; 5:7; 23:13/.; 29:17. 



ORIGIN OF THE DECALOGUE 115 

rental blessings and curses were regarded as the most 
important factors that determined the good or ill 
fortunes of descendants. A father's curse, once pro- 
nounced, might exercise its blighting effect almost auto- 
matically without the aid of Jahveh, and the paternal 
blessing was thought to operate in much the same way. 
Isaac, having through deception been led to pronounce 
a blessing on Jacob, can utter only a curse on. Esau, and 
both work out their effects independently of Jahveh. 
Noah and Jacob in similar manner controlled the 
destinies of their sons by the mystic power of curses 
and blessings which they bequeathed to them. Here 
lay the primary source of the sanctity that attached 
to the persons of aged parents, and which invested 
with sinister as well as auspicious significance the 
words, '*that thy days may be long in the land which 
Jahveh thy God giveth thee." 

Plato furnishes in his Laws striking evidence of the 
existence of analogous beliefs among the Greeks. 
Neither God nor man, he averred, could countenance 
neglect of parents. "The curses of parents are, as 
they ought to be, mighty against their children as no 
others are. . . . May we not think . . . that we can 
possess no image [of a deity] which is more honored 
by the gods, than that of a father or grandfather, or 
of a mother stricken in years? Whom when a man 
honors, the lieart of the god rejoices and he is ready 
to answer their prayers." ^ 

» XI, 930-32. 



ii6 THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

6. Thou shall not kill. 

The sixth commandment is a simple prohibition ex- 
pressed in Hebrew by one word with a negative. It is 
not the usual word for **to kill," but one that signifies 
murdering. Since blood-revenge ranks among the 
earliest and foremost of a clansman's social obliga- 
tions, murder of a clansman, or of a fellow country- 
man, was probably one of the first acts that was 
counted a wrong against the social group. In its orig- 
inal intention this commandment, of course, applied 
only to those who were members of the same political 
group, whether small or large. 

The regulations which govern homicide in ancient 
communities always have reference to the fighting 
capacity of the group. The killing of a clansman 
meant the weakening of the clan to that extent, and 
this was the concern of all its members. Therefore 
clans made reprisals on the principle of collective 
responsibility in requiring the killing of some member 
of the murderer's clan, not necessarily the actual 
murderer. 

Within a large group, as a tribe or a nation, the col- 
lective method of settling one's grievances early gave 
way to that in which the nearest kinsman of the slain 
constituted himself the avenger of blood and settled 
the family's account with that of the murderer by 
retaliation. This was the practice in Israel during the 
greater part of the Old Testament period. 

The ancient institution of blood-revenge, there- 



ORIGIN OF THE DECALOGUE 117 

fore, marked out a large domain in which this com- 
mandment remained inoperative. Even a man who 
caused the death of another accidentally was legally 
at the mercy of the avenger unless he could reach some 
specified asylum without being overtaken. The very 
appointment of cities of refuge in Israel, to which one 
guilty of involuntary manslaughter might flee, con- 
ceded to the slain man's kin the right to murder the 
innocent refugee if they could. This grave evil could 
be remedied only by the abrogation of the right of 
private revenge. But the practice was so fortified by 
religious sanction and tribal custom that the asylum 
system was first put forward, also in the name of reli- 
gion, as a palliative. 

As a matter of course the ancient Israelite made no 
application of this commandment to the barbarities 
of warfare. Wars continued to be declared *'holy" in 
the name of Jahveh. The ban ^ of destruction, in- 
volving at times the massacre of all the males of a con- 
quered city, at other times of the entire population of 
men, women, children, and animals, continued to be 
carried out in the name of the very religion that owned 
the ten commandments. 

Finally, there remain as virtual exceptions of the 
sixth commandment those numerous cases in which the 
death penalty was inflicted for comparatively trivial 
or superstitious reasons. The barbarous system of col- 
lective responsibility countenanced the killing of all 
1 Josh. 6:17-24; Dt. I3:i5#-; I'Sam. 15:33. 



ii8 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

the members of a family with the guilty one, or in his 
stead. David handed over to the Gibeonites seven 
descendants of Saul to be put to death for misdeeds 
committed by their grandfather. And the Gibeonites 
"hanged them in the mountain before Jahveh." ^ 
f Since the law of blood-revenge applied only in the 
case of freemen the killing of a slave was not a serious 
matter. A master who beat his slave so that he died 
after a day or two was not to be punished, according to 
the Mosiac Law, for the reason that ''he loses his own 
property." In primitive as in more modern times the 
various forms of judicial murder have yielded but 
slowly to the demands of a higher moral law and a 
growing appreciation of the value of human life. 

The absolute value, therefore, which this command- 
ment appears to place upon human life is found to be 
illusory when examined historically. All formulas of 
this kind mean much or little, according to the cul- 
ture and ethical temper of the age that uses them. The 
ancient Hebrews understood it relatively only, and in 
conformity with the exceptions made by their customs. 
Jesus put into it the meaning of a new age. 

7. Thou shall not commit adultery. 

This commandment was intended to protect the 

exclusive right of a man to his wife. Both the second 

person masculine of the verb, and the fact that usage 

generally applied it to the acts of men, shows that the 

,» II Sam. 21:9. 



ORIGIN OF THE DECALOGUE 119 

adult male Israelite is the person addressed. A wife 
was acquired by purchase, which may account for the 
fact that one feels uncertain in some instances whether 
adultery is treated as a violation of property rights, 
or as a breach of sexual purity. A man's property in- 
terest became effective the moment he had paid the 
mohaVj or purchase price. Hence a man who sinned 
with "a virgin betrothed," one for whom the purchase 
money had already been paid, was held guilty of hav- 
ing "humbled his neighbour's wife," and the case like 
any other was punishable with death. ^ 

The treatment of misconduct with a concubine is 
clearer in its bearing. In such a case the guilty man 
was required only to pay a fine to her master. A con- 
cubine was almost invariably a female slave, and the 
fine was exacted to atone for the infringement of her 
husband-master's property rights. The ultimate rea- 
son for this lenient treatment of both offenders must 
lie in the fact that a natural son by a concubine stood 
little chance, ordinarily, of becoming a link in the regu- 
lar male succession of the family. As we shall see, it 
probably was the vital religious importance attached 
to the legitimacy of the male heirs in a family that 
led to the rigorous treatment of adultery. Usually the 
severity of penalties imposed by society furnishes a 
measure of the injury it is supposed to have suffered. 

The readiness with which Abraham and Isaac in 
early traditions ^ expose their wives to adultery in 

* Dt. 22: 23, 24. 2 Gen. chaps. 12; 20; 26. 



120 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

order to protect their own persons deserves considera- 
tion in this connection if these traditions reflect the 
moral feeling of those who wrote them down during 
the ninth or eighth century B.C. Saul took away 
David's wife, Michal, and gave her to Paltiel, and a 
pathetic story tells how, after a time, she was wrested 
again from the latter by David's command.^ In neither 
case is there an allusion to a breach of the seventh 
commandment. The matter is treated as a violation of 
property rights. Similarly Nathan,^ in the case of 
Uriah the Hittite, charges David with high-handed 
stealing and murder. The rich man appropriates the 
lamb which the poor man has ** bought " and nurtured. 
Adultery is not mentioned by name, although it doubt- 
less was present to the mind of the narrator. The prop- 
erty-aspect of the deed is uppermost even in the mind 
of the redactor who makes Jahveh say to David, ** I 
will take thy wives before thine eyes and give them to 
thy neighbour,*' making Jahveh the agent in punishing 
one case of adultery with another. But did not the 
wives deserve moral consideration? What happens to 
them is considered only in the light of its effect upon 
David, their husband-owner. This indicates that the 
property aspect of adultery still outweighs that of 
moral purity. Otherwise Jahveh is deliberately pro- 
posing the moral degradation of David's wives merely 
to lacerate their husband's feelings. 

How relative and one-sided the seventh command- 
1 II Sam. 3:13-1^. * II Sam. 12. 



ORIGIN OF THE DECALOGUE 121 

ment is appears in the fact that Israelite wives were 
never accorded ground for complaint on account of a 
husband's unfaithfulness. The very conception of a 
husband's obligation of fidelity to his wives was lack- 
ing. The laws were made by men for men. Therefore 
only husbands were liable to injury, on the one hand 
by their wives, who could break only their own bonds 
of wedlock, and on the other by men who could break 
only those of others. So far as wives were concerned, 
a husband's affairs with other women were not re- 
garded as an infringement of their rights. The Israelite 
freeman was answerable for his actions as a husband 
only to other freemen whose marital rights he might 
invade. 

The existence of these entirely different standards 
of sexual morality, one for the husband and the other 
for the wife, is an indisputable fact of Old Testament 
social ethics. It is an extremely tempting inference 
that this divergence in the community's comparative 
estimate of male and female sexual responsibility was 
occasioned by beliefs connected with ancestor worship. 
The general prevalence of polygamy and the condition 
of serfdom to which women were reduced would have 
tended to fix and perpetuate the double standard after 
it had arisen. It would be interesting to learn to what 
extent the Old Testament has been responsible for the 
nurture of a dual standard of social purity in Christian 
countries. 

Undoubted survivals of ancestor worship among the 



122 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

ancient Hebrews suggest that the commandment 
against adultery was prompted by a motive deeper 
than the desire to protect property rights, and yet one 
that was distinct from the modern requirement of so- 
cial purity. In India, Greece, and Rome an offering 
could be made to a dead person only by one who was 
actually or constructively descended from him. A nat- 
ural son meant the extinction of the family and its 
religion, and the perpetration of a grave act of im- 
piety against the ancestral dead. 

Beliefs so widespread among ancient societies un- 
doubtedly had their counterpart in Israel. The Deu- 
teronomist still exacts a liturgical oath from every 
male Israelite when he brings his tithe that he has not 
*' given thereof [as an offering] to a dead person." ^ 
Given the belief that the happiness of the dead depends 
not upon the life led in this state of existence, but upon 
offerings brought by legitimate descendants, a powerful 
motive is supplied for the observance of conjugal fidel- 
ity. It will be seen at once that under this construction 
of family religion the obligations rested entirely upon 
the wife, for her conduct only could affect the status 
of the family of which she formed a part. She was the 
real authenticator of birth and parentage. Her hus- 
band's acts could endanger only the status of other 
families. Here may lie the source of the belief that a 
wife's unfaithfulness is a vastly more serious matter 

^ * Dt. 26: 14; cf. Gen. 35:8, 14; these two verses doubtless were sepa- 
rated by the P redactor. 



ORIGIN OF THE DECALOGUE 123 

than that of her husband. Therefore when the religion 
of Jahveh invested with a divine sanction this ancient 
obligation never to break that series of legitimate heirs 
which was every family's sole and sacred bond between 
the living and the dead, it did a notable thing. It 
carried the obligation beyond the woman to the man, 
for it said to him, ''Thou shalt not commit adultery." 

8. Thou shalt not steal. 

This precept is so elementary that it undoubtedly 
formed part of the unwritten moral code of Israel long 
before the time of Moses. In early nomadic societies, 
however, there was not much that could be stolen ex- 
cept animals, weapons, food, and garments. As the arts 
of life advanced, the number and variety of property 
rights increased, and theft became a more and more 
serious offence. 

Among the Israelites the obligation to respect pri- 
vate property, we must suppose, experienced the same 
gradual enlargement as other promptings of the moral 
instinct. This means that originally it had binding 
force only between members of the same tribal group. 
This was particularly true of nomads who almost de- 
pended for their living upon theft and robbery. Even 
David played the part of a Bedawin sheik when he 
levied blackmail because his men had not made booty 
of Nabal's flocks. 

The constantly reiterated warnings of the prophets 
and the Deuteronomists against unjust treatment of 



124 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

the resident foreigner or client had their reason in the 
inherited practice of making moral obligations coex- 
tensive with blood-kinship only. Plain foreigners were 
legitimate prey. It is the Elohist ^ who tells how Jahveh 
himself, through Moses, requests the Israelites to bor- 
row from the Egyptians with the concealed intention of 
keeping what they get. In spite of all the expedients 
of traditional interpreters this is and remains to a 
modern mind plain stealing. But in the mind of the 
ancient Hebrew the act aroused no scruples, because 
all foreigners were real or potential enemies, and his 
conduct toward them was not governed by moral con- 
siderations. His religious ethics still were tribal in their 
scope. 

9. Thou shall not hear false witness against thy neighbour. 
The enormous importance attached to public opin- 
ion in all forms of early society is a thing well known to 
anthropologists. In more advanced societies customary 
law began to take care of a man's reputation. As the 
law concerned itself more and more exclusively with 
penal offences, slander became a matter of slighter im- 
portance. But a member of a ruder and more primitive 
society, as Mr. Marett remarks, "cannot stand up for 
a moment against an adverse public opinion; to rob 
him of his good name is to rob him of all that makes life 
worth living." We must suppose, therefore, that this 
commandment had as a forerunner one directed against 

* Ex. 11:1-3. 



ORIGIN OF THE DECALOGUE 125 

slander. Such a one still survives as a part of the Cove- 
nant Code, and it is found conjoined with another which 
is substantially the ninth commandment of the deca- 
logue: "Thou shalt not utter a false report; thou shalt 
not assist him who is in the wrong by becoming an un- 
righteous witness." ^ 

The present form of the commandment not to bear 
false witness assumes the existence of some kind of 
judicial machinery. Under the tribal organization it 
must have been extremely primitive, for a sheik can- 
not enforce his decision even if he makes one. His au- 
thority had moral force only. Gressmann ^ has stated 
convincingly some critical objections to the view that 
Moses instituted at Mount Sinai the somewhat elab- 
orate judicial system attributed to him in Exodus.^ 
But when he assumes that events at Kadesh instead of 
at Sinai form the historical basis of the tradition, one 
is tempted to desert him for a later date and a more 
complex society. 

Josephus is authority for the statement that women 
and slaves could not qualify as witnesses."* Whether 
this held true during the entire Old Testament period 
cannot be decided upon existing evidence. But wher- 
ever witnesses are mentioned they are men, and the 
present commandment, also, is addressed to men on 
behalf of men. Since in the family all were under the 
power of the master, Hebrew judicial procedure prob- 

* Ex. 23: 1. 2 Mose und seine Zeit, p. 175 Jf. 

« Ex. 18 (E). * Ant. IV, 219. 



126 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

ably was closely analogous to that of Rome both in 
origin and in practice. Plutarch declares that at Rome 
women could not appear in court as witnesses.^ The 
jurisconsult Gaius furnished the following reason and 
explanation: '* It should be known that nothing can be 
granted in the way of justice to persons under power 
— that is to say, to wives, sons, and slaves. For it is 
reasonably concluded that, since these persons can own 
no property, neither can they reclaim anything in 
point of justice." 2 in short, the public tribunal ex- 
isted only for the master of the family, and he was re- 
sponsible for the members of his household. So far as 
the evidence goes, this states the facts also for Israelite 
practice. ** If an unrighteous witness rise up against 
any man to testify against him of wrong-doing," 
writes the Deuteronomist, ^^then both men between 
whom the controversy is shall stand before Jahveh, and 
before the priests and the judges that shall be in those 
days." 3 

How liable this crude system of administering jus- 
tice was to abuse through employment of false wit- 
nesses is shown by the case of Naboth who was put 
to death upon the testimony of two "base fellows." ^ 
The moral censure of the prophets and wise men, and 
the severe punishment meted out to a false witness, 
indicates the existence of a strong public sentiment 
against this evil. The actual evidence of this feeling, 

* Plutarch, Puhlicola, 8. * Gaius, ii, 96 ; iv, 77, 78. 

• Dt. 19:16, 17. * I Kings 21. 



ORIGIN OF THE DECALOGUE 127 

however, is confined almost entirely to literature that 
originated after the middle of the eighth century B.C. 



10. Thou shall not covet thy neighbour's house, 

Jf this was the original form of the commandment, 
the word "house/' as often in Hebrew, meant the 
family and everything that belonged to the family. 
The Deuteronomic variant puts the wife first as the 
foremost of a husband's possessions. It scarcely is 
necessary to remind the reader that the *' neighbour" 
meant a fellow Israelite. 

There has been much discussion about the tenth 
commandment because it apparently passes from evil 
acts to evil desires. Many look upon this fact as in it- 
self evidence of a comparatively late stage of religious 
development. Others, like Eerdmans, maintain that 
**01d Testament righteousness is always external and 
never becomes a matter of inward disposition." ^ He 
holds that the word translated to ** covet" should be 
rendered to ''appropriate that which has no individual 
owner." In support of his view he appeals to the pas- 
sage "neither shall any man covet thy land, when 
thou goest up to appear before Jahveh thy God three 
times the year." 2 

Old Testament morality is undoubtedly forensic 
and external. While the religion of the prophets ulti- 
mately developed a certain degree of inwardness, few 

1 Theol Tijdschrift (1903), Heft i, p. 25. 

2 Ex. 34*24; cf. AS, III, p. 142. 



V 



128 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

evidences of this deepening process can be found during 
the pre-exilic period. It is not likely, therefore, that 
such a commandment as this would have been included 
in the decalogue unless the law-giver had thought of 
the deed in connection with the desire. So much may 
be regarded as certain even though one finds the evi- 
dence for Eerdmans* meaning of the word inconclu- 
sive. 

A little reflection will show that the late arrival in 
Hebrew religion of the subjective element of thought 
and intention is found in keeping with what one might 
expect. The period of group morality and of a com- 
munal conception of religion is not favorable to the 
development of a subjective conception of religious 
duty. The subjectivizing process of religion and 
morality is found associated historically with indi- 
vidualism, not with communalism. Individualism in 
Hebrew religion, however, does not begin to appear 
until about the time of Jeremiah. The general trend 
of these considerations, therefore, favors either a com- 
paratively late origin for the tenth commandment, or 
a concrete and external interpretation of its meaning. 

The general results of this discussion may be sum- 
marized as follows: — 

1. More than one decalogue arose in the course of 
Hebrew history. 

2. Of two which survive, the component precepts 
were addressed only to men as heads of families; 



ORIGIN OF THE DECALOGUE 129 

women and children being bound to obedience through 
the men, who alone were capable of discharging reli- 
gious functions. 

3. The standard decalogue contains some com- 
mandments that must have originated long before the 
time of Moses; others, again, can scarcely have origi- 
nated until long after his time. 

4. We are, therefore, compelled to assume that the 
decalogue is itself the product of a long development, 
and that it was compiled after the great prophets had 
finished their work. 

To the student of ethical development, the point of 
chief interest lies not in the origination of the indivi- 
dual precepts, but in the selection of these command- 
ments as a summary statement of an Israelite's re- 
ligious duties. Being of a very general character, their 
interpretation and observance necessarily changed so 
as to keep pace with the morality, enlightenment, and 
culture of an advancing society. 

It must already have occurred to readers of these 
pages that the prevailing interpretation and appraisal 
of the decalogue as a rule of conduct is strangely at 
variance with the ascertainable facts of its origin and 
its immature social ethics. These facts are fatal to any 
theory of miraculous oracular deliverances on Mount 
Sinai, and happily so. Moral precepts must be judged 
by their character, not by their sources. Conscience 
may be educated, but it cannot be instructed. Even 
God cannot legislate for man morally except through 



130 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

his own sense of right. Even if an action were not other- 
wise wrong, it would be less than right unless the doer, 
in his own heart, judges it to be right. God is not 
morally served if he is obeyed in any other way. 

For these reasons the traditional view of the deca- 
logue, and of its origin, is not only false on the facts, 
but immoral in its theory. Men have only recently 
learned that moral education cannot consist in telling 
the pupil on authority what he ought to do, but in 
making him see for himself the thing that is right. 
A growing moral personality must be self -directing. 
Though no judgment of conscience is infallible, a 
moral faith in God as the moral law-giver is identical 
with the belief that, in so far as we see right, we find 
his will. 

Incontestable facts show that the decalogue, also, 
has been promulgated, divinely indeed, from the Si- 
nais of countless human hearts. Here, as in the 
storm and stress of other struggles for a higher life, the 
lightning flashed and the thunder broke from clouds 
of human experience. Nor will one who has watched, 
through long hours of historical study, the toilsome 
progress of mankind toward higher ideals be disturbed 
by the constant identification of God's will with the 
partial attainments of the toilers. They were but ex- 
pressing their intense faith in the value of their gains. 
It was Jesus of Nazareth who denoted the inhibitions 
of this early human experience as incomplete when he 
applied the demands of a higher conscience to what 



ORIGIN OF THE DECALOGUE 131 

''was said to them of old time," ^ and made the es- 
sence of "the law and the prophets" consist in the 
practice of the golden rule. 

Note. — Meek*s careful treatment of " The Sabbath in 
the Old Testament " (JBL, vol. xxxiii, pt. iii) reached me 
after the completion of my manuscript. It is a great pleas- 
ure to find that our conclusions are in substantial agreement. 

* Mt. 5:21 ff, ; cf. 7: 12, and 22:37-40. 



CHAPTER V 

PIONEERS OF A NEW ERA 
Amos of Tekoa and Hosea ben-Beeri 

I 

An almost countless series of essays and books testi- 
fies to the fascination which the extant writings ^ of 
the herdsman prophet of Tekoa have exercised over 
the minds of Bible students. This is not due merely 
to the circumstance, whether original or adventitious, 
that Amos* sermons inaugurate the era of written 
prophecy. To one who approaches his utterances 
through the early traditions of Israel, he exhibits a 
moral elevation that challenges attention as does the 
Matterhorn above the valley of Zermatt. His person 
and work constitute a striking phenomenon in the his- 
tory of religious experience. 

Budde doubtless is right in his explanation of the 
opening verse of the book, with its reference to the 
"two years before the earthquake," ^ as a learned ad- 
dition of later date. It would be useless in any case for 
the determination of the commencement of Amos* 

* The following passages, generally recognized as editorial additions of 
a later date, do not enter into this study: Am. 1:2 ; 1:9-12; 4: 13 ; 5: 
8-9 ; 6:2 ; reference to hunger for "words of Jahveh" probably inter- 
polated in 8: 11-13, if the whole passage is not a later addition; 9:5-6, 
and 9:8-15. It seems very likely that 1:6-8, and 3:7 also are later 
additions. 

2 Cf. Budde, ZAW, 1910, pp. 37-41. 



PIONEERS OF A NEW ERA 133 

prophetic career. For practical purposes one may 
assume that his activity began about 750 B.C. Prob- 
ably the impression produced by the great solar eclipse 
of 763 B.C. lies behind the threat that ''the sun shall 
go down at noon." ^ Earthquakes were of frequent 
occurrence in Palestine, and the fact that Amos refers 
in the same breath to earthquake and solar eclipse 
as impending calamities is indirect testimony to the 
great terror which both inspired. They always were 
portentous signs to the peoples of antiquity, who ob- 
viously had no conception of general laws.^ Amos and 
his Israelite contemporaries regarded Jahveh as the 
direct cause of all such portents and calamities, and, 
therefore, assumed that he must have some definite 
reason for sending them.^ This fact affords him the 
opportunity to reach their conscience by playing upon 
their fear. In doing so he is speaking out of the popu- 
larly accepted beliefs of his day. 

It would be obscurantism to hide from ourselves the 
fact that such beliefs have become untenable. They are 
the product of a primitive science of the world, and a 
theory of the moral order which is to us immoral. 
Jesus on one occasion called attention to the fact that 
God lets the sun shine and the rain fall on the good 

* Am. 8:7-10. 

2 In one of the old chronicles of Hildeshelm, as late as the year 990 
A.D. occurs the following entry: " In the same year on the 21st of October 
occurred a great solar eclipse, and it was followed by great mortality 
among men and beasts." Transl. from Monumenta Germaniae. 

' The idea that Jahveh causes earthquakes and eclipses must at some 
period have displaced the belief that earth and air demons were respons- 
ible for these phenomena. 



N,' 



134 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

and the bad alike. A larger science has enabled the 
modern man to see that God governs the world by 
orderly processes of law, not by sporadic interferences, 
and a deeper theodicy has shown a serious moral de- 
fect in the view that God employs great natural catas- 
trophies to punish men, thus engulfing both the good 
and the bad in one common ruin. Besides, the con- 
ception of a world that is governed in the interest of a 
favored minority, a "chosen people," is in any case 
incompatible with the Christian idea of God. 

But Amos shared these beliefs with his contempo- 
raries and proclaimed them with a "Thus saith the 
Lord." They were almost inevitable under the con- 
ception of the moral order which then prevailed. This 
fact will become more apparent later on. Amos as yet 
knew nothing of a future life to which the problem 
of divine rewards and punishments could be referred. 
Yet belief in Jahveh*s guardianship of right demanded 
requital of men for their deeds. It will be sufficient at 
this point to suggest that one who is restricted, as 
Amos was, to our natural world for evidences of God's 
moral government has no recourse but to interpret 
national calamities as divine punishments, or to de- 
clare the world a moral chaos. 

Until the middle of the eighth century B.C. Hebrew 
prophecy had concerned itself chiefly with the defence 
of the national life. Amos applies his prophetic gifts 
to a relentless criticism of the popular and sacerdotal 
religion of his time, and thus leads the first great moral 



PIONEERS OF A NEW ERA 135 

advance. The greatness of the service he rendered 
cannot be fully appreciated without a brief review of 
contemporary ideas about the deity's relation to the 
nation. It has already been pointed out, in passing, 
that the existing social order was reflected in Hebrew 
popular theology. The people conceived the relation 
between Jahveh and Israel to be a natural and indis- 
soluble one, like that between the Moabites and their 
god Chemosh. He is the king behind the king and 
regards his worshippers as the latter regards his sub- 
jects. A king without subjects and a deity without 
worshippers are equally unfortunate, for the one needs 
the homage and gifts of his subjects, and the other the 
sanctuary and sacrifices provided by his worshippers. 
It is assumed, therefore, that the deity, no less than 
the king, will seek to secure the perpetuation of the 
nation as a measure of self-interest. 

From this narrow tribal conception of Jahveh it fol- 
lows that his obligations toward the nation are chiefly 
of a protective nature. He must help the Israelites 
against their foreign enemies. Moral considerations 
hardly play a part where foreigners are concerned. The 
narrator of Gen. 12 is scarcely conscious that Jahveh, 
by ** plaguing Pharaoh with great plagues," justifies 
the lie whereby Abraham has enriched himself and 
dishonored his wife. The same moral twilight en- 
velops the tradition that represents Jahveh as bound 
to carry out against Esau the fraudulently obtained 
blessing of Isaac. This was a perfectly natural assump- 



136 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

tion as long as the average Israelite attributed to 
Jahveh his own hostility to foreigners. The assump- 
tions which underlie these and similar traditions may 
be offered as typical illustrations of the two main ob- 
stacles which stood in the way of moral progress: the 
national- god-idea, and the identification of Jahveh' s will 
with the particularistic ethics of IsraeVs tribal customs. 

What does Amos have to say to this moral obliquity 
by which Jahveh, on the basis of a supposed necessary 
alliance between Israel and himself, is claimed as the 
sanctioner and defender of Israel's wickedness? His 
answer must have been startling in the extreme; to 
many it must have seemed even blasphemous and un- 
patriotic. ** You only have I known of all the families of 
the earth; therefore will I visit upon you all your ini- 
quities." ^ Amos grants that Jahveh is the God of 
Israel only, but he makes a use of the national-god- 
idea which was bound to destroy its old meaning. Two 
objections are entered: (i) Jahveh's relation to Israel 
is not a necessary, but a voluntary one. He chose them 
and can dissolve the relation again, for they are not 
necessary to his existence or well-being. (2) Far from 
becoming their champion in political troubles and so 
conniving at their wickedness, he, being a moral per- 
sonality, is bound to chastise them even unto destruc- 
tion. 

It is difficult for a modern to realize how paradoxical 
this declaration must have sounded to the hearers of 

* Am. 3:2. 



PIONEERS OF A NEW ERA 137 

Amos, for popularly it meant the destruction both of 
the nation and of its religion. Since the exercise of 
religion in Israel, as in other ancient Semitic states, 
had for its object the prosperity and perpetuation of 
organized society, no one could suppose that any god 
would destroy his own clients. On the contrary, the 
chief function of the national god is that of leading his 
worshippers to victory against foreigners, — his enemies 
and theirs. Hence the Israelites are looking forward to 
the great battle-day on which Jahveh will vindicate 
them against their foreign enemies. 

Amos has only bitter scorn for this expectation of 
unmoral partisanship, *' Woe unto you, that desire the 
day of Jahveh: Wherefore would ye have the day of 
Jahveh? ... As if a man did flee from a lion, and a 
bear met him: or went into the house and leaned his 
hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him. Shall not the 
day of Jahveh be darkness, and not light? Even very 
dark and no brightness in it!" ^ Jahveh*s favor, de- 
clares Amos, is contingent upon the moral character 
of the recipient. Claiming to be his people, they must 
conform to his will, which is ethical. Failing in that, 
the religious bond which should be their strength, must 
be their undoing, for Jahveh does not grant his aid, as 
a certificate of good moral character, to a people that 
does not deserve it. 

One must bear in mind that Hebrew worshippers at 
this time were not conscious of a distinction between 
1 Am. 5:18-20. 



138 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

cultus and religion, for they regarded the support and 
proper administration of the cultus as a complete dis- 
charge of their religious obligations. This was a time- 
honored belief in Semitic as in many other ancient re- 
ligions. There might be times when the deity would 
be offended and refuse to accept the offered sacrifices. 
But that he might refuse them altogether, as ineffi- 
cacious to secure his favor, was an idea foreign to an- 
cient notions of divine requirements. The sacrificial 
feasts were a highly prized feature of community life 
and tended to be orgiastic in their joyousness. Ac- 
cording to the simple theology of those days the deity 
shared the pleasures of the occasion with his worship- 
pers, and so renewed the bond that constituted him 
their champion and patron. 

But Amos, in no uncertain tone, exposes as a de- 
lusion this pojiular confidence in the cultus as the be 
all and the end all of religion. He understands Jahveh 
to say: '*I hate, I despise your [sacrificial] feasts,^ and 
will not smell [the savor of] your festal assemblies. 
Yea, though ye offer me your burnt-offerings and meal- 
offerings, I will not accept them ; neither will I regard 
the peace-offerings of your fat beasts." ^ Observing the 
zeal with which the people make pilgrimages to Bethel 
and Gilgal in order to sacrifice and feast merrily to- 
gether, the prophet declares it not only valueless, but 
sinful.' 

1 Haggim, "pilgrim feasts," which were of a highly joyous character; 
I Sam. 30: 16, describes the Amalekites behaving as at a pilgrim-feast. 
» Am. 5:21 /. ' Am. 4- 4-5' 



PIONEERS OF A NEW ERA 139 

The sacrifices, it should be noted, are offered to 
Jahveh. The statements of Amos and Hosea leave no 
doubt upon this point. The Deuteronomic writers of 
a later period are unhistorical in their representation 
that not Jahveh, but idols, were worshipped at the 
northern sanctuaries. In his very tone Amos assumes 
that the people already know what Jahveh demands in 
place of this ceremonial service. Nevertheless he form- 
ulates his conception of Jahveh's requirements in sev- 
eral striking sentences. 

In place of the rejected and worthless sacrifices they 
are to ^'let justice roll down as waters and righteous- 
ness as an everflowing stream."^ The direct parallel- 
ism between the following passages indicates that 
** seeking Jahveh'* and "seeking good'* are substan- 
tially equivalent expressions: — 

"Seek Jahveh, and ye shall live"; ^ 

"Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live." ' 
To "seek Jahveh" had always meant to visit a Jahveh 
sanctuary in order to offer sacrifices. The very dif- 
ferent meaning which Amos now gives to the phrase is 
in detail dependent upon the question of what he un- 
derstood by "good." It must suffice in this connec- 
tion to note its undoubted moral significance. In 
extant written prophecy these passages constitute 
the first great declaration, in the Old Testament, of 
the inseparability of morality and religion. So funda- 
mental is this recognition of the ethical character of 

1 Am. 5:24. 2 Am. 5:6. 3 Am. 5:14. Cf. also 5:6 and 5: 15. 



140 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

true religion that out of it have grown the positive 
gains of the entire subsequent development of Israel's 
religion. 

Amos* declaration that sacrifice cannot indemnify 
for the neglect of Jahveh's moral precepts implies a 
clear perception of God's will as an ethical will, and 
that he recognized in moral conduct the supreme re- 
quirement of religion. To his credit, therefore, will it 
ever be said, that he was the first great prophet in 
Israel who defined religion in terms of moral obliga- 
tion. There was no possibility of moral progress in the 
old idea that Jahveh was simply the guardian of exist- 
ing social customs among Israelites, and that he de- 
manded sacrifices as fines for sins committed, or as a 
retaining fee to champion their cause against foreign 
enemies. Such a religion was a comfortable pillow, 
especially as long as the king assumed the duty of 
maintaining the cultus in a state of becoming magnifi- 
cence out of the royal funds. Upon this religion of mad 
and sensual indulgence, typified by the sacrificial revel- 
lers at Bethel, the herdsman prophet of Tekoa served 
the summons of a higher conscience, supported by an 
essentially new conception of Jahveh and his demands. 

It would be interesting and illuminating to learn 
what Amos included under the term "good." To read 
a New Testament meaning into the word would be a 
serious mistake. He doubtless would have admitted 
some social customs and forms of conduct under this 
heading which the Christian judgment of our time 



PIONEERS OF A NEW ERA 141 

would unhesitatingly classify differently. We need 
but instance polygamy, slavery, and blood-revenge — 
institutions which entirely escaped censure by the 
prophets, because the moral feeling of the time dis- 
cerned nothing wrong in them. In such matters Amos, 
also, stood upon the moral plane of his environment. 
He may have endeavored to regulate the abuses of such 
institutions, but did not advocate their abolition. 

If we do not know all that Amos meant by "good,*' 
neither do we know all that he meant by the "iniqui- 
ties" which Jahveh is to visit upon his people. Some 
of Amos' denunciations suggest that his understand- 
ing of "evil" included things that cannot be con- 
demned on moral grounds. Notice, for instance, his 
vehement arraignment of what might be called ordi- 
nary luxuries of life. Like many another ardent re- 
former, he probably did not always stop to distinguish 
between abuse and legitimate use of certain things. 
Unfortunately neither the depths nor the shallows of 
his moral judgment are accessible now to the plummet 
of psychological analysis. This much, however, is 
clear, that the fundamental social virtues — justice, 
honesty, truthfulness, and fair dealing — occupy the 
foreground of his thought. There is, indeed, a series 
of passages which seem to restrict Jahveh's moral re- 
quirements to the proper administration of justice on 
the one hand, and a condition of legal rectitude on the 
other. ^ This identification of righteousness with legal 

1 Am. 2:7/.; 5:7, 10-12; 8:4-6. 



142 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

righteousness, however, is to be regarded as more ap- 
parent than real. The limit lies in the emphasis, not in 
the application of his thought. Amos had before his 
eyes the everlasting curse of the East, bribery of elders 
and priests who served as judges. This corruption of 
the courts deprived the poor man of his right and filled 
the houses of the rich with violence and spoil. ^ 

Since overtness is a necessary condition of legal 
guilt it is well to remind one's self of the fact that the 
judgments of Amos and his successors still move in a 
realm where motives as yet play a scarcely perceptible 
part. For morality differentiates itself from legality at 
the point where the inward test of merit begins to sup- 
plant the outward. Amos is seeking to apply concrete 
remedies to concrete sins. Therefore he postulates as 
the foundation of acceptable religion that elemental 
requirement of the moral law which his hearers so 
signally violate in their human relations. For the same 
reason Jahveh seems to him an impersonation of jus- 
tice, and the sacrifices "a covering of the eyes," an 
attempt to bribe the supreme judge. 

No picture of Amos' fancy is so full of meaning as 
that of the mystic figure on the wall with a plumb-line 
in his hand. It is his symbol for an inexorable, un- 
deviating Justice whose decision must prove fatal to 
Israel. The fundamental character of social justice in 
the sermons of Amos is a matter of scientific interest 
to the student of moral origins. Here as elsewhere the 

1 Am. 3:10. 



PIONEERS OF A NEW ERA 143 

facts of moral development among the Hebrews are in 
harmony with the wider experience of mankind.^ 

We have already had occasion to observe that legal 
righteousness does not exhaust the ethical content of 
what Amos calls ''good." Legal righteousness would, 
of course, mean Hebrew legal righteousness, which 
could not be otherwise than local and temporal in its 
scope. But Amos has in mind an ethical standard by 
which he judges the conduct of neighboring nations 
also. 2 In other words, he begins to free the idea of 
justice, of good, from national and legal limitations, 
giving to the morality he preaches an international 
significance.^ Crude and vague as it undoubtedly was 
in particulars, it now was capable of developing into 
rules of action that have universal validity. 

Since the issue is charged with ethical consequences, 
it devolves upon us, at this point, to enquire whether 
Amos was a monotheist. In my opinion this question 
must be unhesitatingly answered in the negative. 
There are those who have seen in him an "uncom- 
promising monotheist." But this view rests either 
upon a loose interpretation of the term monotheism, 
or upon an imperfect understanding of the course of 
religious development in Israel. Strictly understood, 
monotheism means belief in the existence of one God 

^ On justice in the system of Thomas Aquinas, cf. W. H. V. Reade, 
The Moral System of Dante's Inferno; for a general treatment of the sub- 
ject, cf. Edward Westermarck, The Origin and Development of the Moral 
Ideas, and Herbert Spencer, Principles of Ethics, i, Justice. 

2 Am. 1:3, 13; 2:1. 

' Cf. Marti, Geschichte der israelitischen Religion (5th ed.) p. 189. 



144 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

only, whose rule is universal. In the literature illus- 
trating religious ideas before and during the time of 
Amos there is no evidence of such monotheism. Jahveh 
was the God of Israel and to him alone the nation owed 
fealty and worship. But every Israelite knew and be- 
lieved that other nations also had their gods, whose 
real existence no one doubted. From one point of 
view this was henotheism, from another monolatry. 
But under no circumstances may one claim mono- 
theism for Amos. Consideration of certain expressions 
employed by him makes it very improbable that he 
ever speculated upon the subject at all. 

Belief in the existence of other deities carried with it 
the correlate idea of a separate domain within which 
each god exercised power. ''Jahveh's inheritance,'* 
for instance, is Palestine, and one who passed beyond 
the boundaries of the country left Jahveh behind, and 
had to place himself under the protection of *' other 
gods" whose domain he has entered.^ Jahveh, there- 
fore, as we have pointed out elsewhere, was not su- 
preme over the world ; he was a part of it. He still was 
intramundane in the popular phraseology. 

Amos, seemingly, did not share this view of Jahveh's 
place and power in its earlier crude form. But it is 
apparent that he was not working with a fundamen- 
tally different conception. He still thought that foreign 
lands were "polluted " because of the presence of other 
deities. 2 To emphasize the impossibility of escape 

1 I Sam. 26: 19; Gen. 4: 14. 2 Am. 7: 17. 



PIONEERS OF A NEW ERA 145 

from punishment, he declared that Jahveh will bring 
up those who dig through into the underworld, and 
bring down those who climb up into heaven.^ Even on 
the supposition that he employed here figures of speech 
one cannot ignore the tacit assumption that Jahveh^s 
proper dwelling-place and judgment-seat is in Pales- 
tine, the prophet's material world of daily experience. 
Amos has not yet attained, in his thought of Jahveh 's 
rule, to a world that is an ordered whole, a cosmos, 
over every part of which the will of Jahveh is supreme. 
This inference is supported by the fact that the idea 
of God's creatorship is found nowhere in the extant 
writings of Amos.^ The occurrence of this idea of 
creatorship would be presumptive evidence of a 
cosmic conception of the world, and consequently of 
monotheism. During the post-exilic period of conscious 
speculative monotheism the idea of God's creatorship 
is nearly always associated with the thought of his 
unity and universality. 

The important point to note is that in Amos Jahveh 
still is intramundane,2Lnd monotheism, when it emerges, 
rests not upon an intramundane, but a supramundane, 
or quasi-transcendental conception of God. But may 
not Amos have been an *' ethical " monotheist, as some 
have claimed? He mentions the Philistines and the 
Aramaeans as people over whose movements Jahveh 

^ Am. 9: 2 ; cf . Lods, La croyance d, la vie future et le culte des morts, vol. 
I, p. 225; also Beer, Der bihlische Hades, p. 7. 

2 The three passages, Am. 4 : 13 ; 5 : 8, 9 ; and 9:5,6, have on independ- 
ent grounds been recognized by scholars as doxological editorial additions. 



146 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

has exercised a directive control. If the text is reliable, 
an impious act of the Moabites against Edom calls 
forth the denunciation of the prophet.^ It would show 
that Amos believed his Israelitic moral standard to be 
valid for non- Israelitic nations also. The case is the 
more remarkable, because the particular failure he has 
in mind is not incident to an issue between an Israelite 
and a foreigner, but concerns the inhuman conduct of 
one foreign nation toward another. 

Undoubtedly Amos greatly expanded the national- 
god idea. From more than one point of view that was 
the psychological consequence of his proclamation of 
doom for Israel. If Jahveh can contemplate the de- 
struction of those whom alone he has ** known of all 
the families of the earth," it raises the presumption 
that his purposes must embrace more than the for- 
tunes of Palestine and its people. He must be able to 
indemnify himself for the loss of his worshippers. These 
considerations indicate that Amos is moving in the 
direction of a cosmic conception of God. The close 
connection between the idea of God and the idea of 
moral obligation appears in the correlate extension of 
the sway of moral law beyond the boundaries of Pales- 
tine. The propulsive power is his sense of Jahveh's 
ethical will, expressing itself in the positive require- 
ments of a moral law. 

However, the conclusion that Amos logically in- 
ferred the universal rule of God from his belief in the 

1 Am. 2:1. 



PIONEERS OF A NEW ERA 147 

universal validity of moral law is not warranted by the 
facts. Amos was not working with an abstract con- 
ception of moral law. He as well as later Hebrew 
prophets were almost painfully concrete in their mental 
processes. When we come to those points in his writ- 
ings where the broader humanitarian view of God and 
the world, which one is accustomed to associate with 
ethical monotheism, might be expected to manifest 
itself, we find he is still speaking the language of He- 
brew particularism. The tone in which he refers to the 
Philistines and Aramaeans, and especially his clap- 
perclaw reference to the Cushites,^ reinforce his as- 
sertion that Jahveh has " known "^ the Israelites 
only. In other words, he expands the national-god- 
idea, but does not burst it. God's impartial fatherly 
interest in all men is not yet an article of his faith. 
This view of the limitations of Amos' contribution to 
Israel's growing knowledge of God agrees also with the 
otherwise remarkable fact that not even the Deuter- 
onomic writers, more than a century later, had arrived 
at a clear monotheistic conception of God. 

When Thomas Aquinas noted as a distinguishing 
characteristic of the Old Testament that it did not 
undertake to punish the soul ^ he saw more clearly than 
most modern readers of the prophets. It requires con- 
siderable familiarity with ancient modes of thought 
to remain conscious of the fact that no ancient Hebrew 



1 Am. 9:7 ("Ethiopians"). ^ Am. 3:2. 

' "Lex vetus animum non cohibebat." Summa Theol. 



148 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

practised religion in order to save his soul, in the New 
Testament sense of that expression. He would have 
understood and used the phrase in the sense of pro- 
longing life on earth, that being the chief benefit which 
he anticipated from the faithful performance of reli- 
gious duties. True, he believed in a shadowy existence 
beyond the grave. But he had no expectation of a 
future life in which Jahveh might reward his virtues or 
punish his sins. Sheol was a cheerless and shadowy 
place where neither rewards nor punishments were 
distributed. Hence the religious economy of the Old 
Testament concerns itself solely with man's earthly 
life. Only in the land of the living can the worshipper 
maintain relations with the deity, or become the object 
of his regard.^ 

However, a moral order, to be authoritative, must 
have power to reward obedience and to enforce it with 
penalties. In the theology of Amos and his contempo- 
raries, this difficulty was met by the time-honored 
belief that Jahveh's rewards were bestowed in the form 
of material prosperity and the perpetuity of national 
existence. On the other hand, sword, drought, pesti- 
lence, and all the various misfortunes of life were his 
instruments of punishment. The highest reward of 
Hebrew virtue, therefore, could be only a tangible and 
earthly good,^ and no punishment could extend beyond 
the body and the possessions that minister to its com- 

1 Ps. 6:5; 30:9. 

2 "Bonum sensibile et terrenum" in the apt phrase of Thomas 
Aquinas. 



PIONEERS OF A NEW ERA 149 

fort and joy. Though the story of Job belongs to a 
later period of developed individualism it illustrates 
the point under discussion here. Possessions, family, 
self — this is the order of values. ''All that a man has, 
will he give for his life." Death is the last blow which 
the punishing hand of the deity may deal. Disease and 
extinction of issue only increase the terrors of its 
approach. 

A very important fact to observe in this ante-mortem 
theodicy is its communal application. The benefits 
and penalties of religion, especially during the pre-exilic 
period, were believed to be administered primarily to 
the nation. This was a perfectly natural expectation, 
since religion existed for the purpose of preserving 
organized society, the state. Hence the duties of reli- 
gion and of citizenship were identical. Long experience 
had taught ancient societies that the individual is safe 
only behind the bulwark of a strong and stable social 
organization. Preservation of the clan is self-preserva- 
tion. This fact explains the intense feeling of group 
solidarity which pervades Hebrew literature in song 
and in story. It also suggests why religion was a 
part of every Israelite's solicitude for the continu- 
ance of his nation, and why in time of danger or 
of conquest it stalked arm in arm with savage pas- 
sions across the bloody battlefields of the ''wars of 
Jahveh." 

The following arrangement will summarize and 
bring out graphically the chief differences between the 



150 



THE OLD TESTAMENT 



religious conceptions of the pre-exilic prophets and 
those of the New Testament: — 



' Pre-exilic 0. T. Prophets 

Subject of religion: the historical 
people of Israel with its political 
and social institutions. 

Point of view: communal-na- 
tional. 

Jahveh, God of Israel only. 

Jahveh, though invisible is of this 
world and dwells particularly in 
Palestine. Intramundane. 

No heaven and no hell. 

No mention of the devil or of 
Satan. 

The body alone subject to punish- 
ment or reward, and only during 
its earthly existence. 

Benefits of religion, material. 
Peace and prosperity of the es- 
tates of the realm. 



New Testament 

Subject of religion: the individual 
soul, conceived to be eternal and 
immortal. 

Point of view: individualistic- 
humanitarian. 

''Our Father," God of all man- 
kind. 

"Our Father, who art in heaven," 
Transcendent. 

Heaven and hell. 

The devil part of a developed 
demonology ; identified with 
Satan. 

Punishment of the body in this life 
a secondary consideration. Em- 
phasis upon punishments and 
rewards of the soul after death. 

Benefits of religion, spiritual. 
Peace of conscience as a sign of 
healthy spiritual life. 



To these controlling conceptions must be added the 
further fact that the morality of the prophets is not 
the inner, universal morality of the human soul, but the 
civic and social morality of the Hebrew as a member of 
the Israelite commonwealth. It is this latter morality 
of which Amos conceives Jahveh to be guardian and 
which, together with the purely mundane benefits of 
its practice, he has in mind when he says, "Seek good 
and not evil, that ye may live." ^ Jahveh's favor is the 
guarantee of the nation's life, of its perpetuity. Accord- 
ing to current popular views it is secured by abundant 

1 Am. 5:14. 



PIONEERS OF A NEW ERA 151 

sacrifices and the faithful observances of feast-days 
and ceremonial. According to Amos it can be secured 
only by the honest administration of justice;^ by the 
retention of simple life and manners ; ^ by the protec- 
tion of the weak and the poor;^ by the practice of 
honesty and brotherliness ; ^ and by the eschewing of 
sexual and other excesses.^ 

Measured by Christian standards this morality is so 
simple, and so close to the earth, that it scarcely comes 
within sight of the Sermon on the Mount. But so 
fundamental was it in its simplicity, that it turned the 
whole course of Israel's religious development into a 
new channel. Henceforward the homage of moral con- 
duct, be it ever so crude, is deemed an essential divine 
requirement. 

It remains in conclusion to discuss specifically Amos' 
idea of retribution. In the light of the foregoing dis- 
cussion his pronouncement of doom upon Israel 
appears in its proper conceptual background. Eternal 
punishment, or eternal death, is its corresponding 
equivalent in Christian theology. Nothing was so 
potent to arouse the fear of an Israelite as the pros- 
pect of national, and consequently individual, destruc- 
tion. In the proclamation of its coming, contingent 
upon conduct, lay the prophet's power to force the 
hand. 

The Deuteronomic reformation is a historical ex- 



* Am. 2:6; 5:10, 15. 2 Am. 6:4/. ' Am. 5:11; 8:6. 

* Am. 5:12; 8:5. 5 Am. 2:7. 



152 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

ample of the effect produced by such fears. The com- 
mon assumption that the moral law could hardly 
command obedience, without the belief in retribution 
beyond the grave, is contradicted by the moral expe- 
rience of Israel, where the expectation of post-mortem 
rewards and punishments was still far below the hori- 
zon. But there was an expectation of retribution in 
this world of which the prophets make effective use. 
It was the traditional force of ancient beliefs, as well 
as the exigencies of his own moral philosophy, that 
constrained Amos to give to every public calamity a 
sinister meaning. Earthquake, solar eclipse, drought, 
famine, locusts, disease, were interpreted as divine 
punishments, and as premonitions of the final catas- 
trophe. So long as the people, rather than the indi- 
vidual, was conceived to be the subject of retribution, 
the inadequacy of this theory was not strongly felt. 
Later the rise of individualistic tendencies made it 
increasingly untenable. 

But we cannot concern ourselves here with the 
ethical defects of this somewhat superstitious view of 
God's moral government of the world. The needed 
corrections were destined to be made by the remoter 
successors of Amos. It is sufficient to remember that 
this was but a part of a mass of other ideas equally 
crude, equally untrue, and equally far behind the 
moral and scientific discernment of our time. Nor 
can we prudently forget, regarding the philosophical 
inwardness of some of these problems, that our age 



PIONEERS OF A NEW ERA 153 

is not much wiser — only more cautious. Our object 
has been to see Amos in his environment of men, 
ideas, and institutions, to discover the new stimulus 
he gave to the religious development of his time. If 
it appears that he also "could but speak his music by 
the framework and the chord," that truth and preju- 
dice, ignorance and wisdom, are strangely mixed in 
the fervid poetry of his thought, what have we but 
a new reminder of the simple fact that Amos, the 
prophet, was also a Hebrew herdsman of the eighth 
century B.C. 

II 

Between the period of Hosea*s activity and that of 
his elder contemporary Amos there intervene at most 
only twenty years. Both belong to the middle of the 
eighth century B.C. It is not surprising, therefore, 
that Hosea presents substantially the same conception 
of God and defends the same ethical ideals. Since the 
fundamental generalizations of the foregoing discus- 
sion of Amos hold true also of the theology and the 
world-view of Hosea, it is not necessary to take up 
these common elements anew. 

A determining peculiarity of Hosea's thought is 
the background of marital experience which gives a 
characteristic color and quality to his writings.^ His 

* Besides numerous glosses, the following longer passages are later 
additions, or doubtful, and have not been utilized in this study: Hos. 
1:7; 1:10-2:1; 2:14-23; 3:1-5 (?); 4:15; 5:15-6:3; 6:11 ; 8:4-6; 8:14; 
10:3-4; 11:8-12; 12:4-6; 12:9-10; 12:12-14; 13:4; 14:1-9; 10: 12 prob- 
ably is only misplaced. 



154 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

domestic tragedy yields him the conceptual apparatus 
of his argument. Jahveh's relation to Israel, he holds, 
is like that of a husband to his wife.^ Out of the con- 
flicting passions of one of the deepest emotional ex- 
periences of which the human heart is capable he de- 
picts Jahveh yearning over his wayward people as he 
himself is yearning over his unfaithful wife. This is 
obviously the reason why he places loyal love"^ {Jiesed), 
rather than justice in the foreground of his thought 
as Jahveh's supreme requirement. Consequently, also, 
he appeals to the love rather than the fear of God in 
the motives he urges for the realization of his ethical 
ideals in the life of the nation. He is thus a more 
winning preacher of morals than Amos, in so far as 
the sweet constraint of love is greater and more last- 
ing than the compulsion of fear. Perhaps some of these 
differences are to be sought in temperament as much 
as in the personal experiences that form the back- 
ground of their respective messages. The following 
tabular comparison will make the correspondences 
and differences more apparent : — 

^ Both the land and its people appear in this r61e. Cf . i : 2 where the 
land is the "mother"; in 5: 7 and 6: 4 the people are in the mind of the 
prophet. For "baal" as owner and husband see p. 192. 

2 Hesed is difficult to translate because it comprehends several mean- 
ings which must be rendered by different words in English. Thus it 
signifies not only " goodness " and " kindness," but also "love " or " af- 
fection" as shown by the parallel phrase "love of thine espousals" [to 
Jahveh] in Jer. 2:2. The context and symbolism show that Hosea uses 
the word primarily in this sense. But because he intentionally lets it 
overflow into other meanings in the same connection I have indicated 
its occurrence parenthetically in the translations. 



PIONEERS OF A NEW ERA 155 
Amos Hosea 

Jahveh, a righteous Judge. Jahveh, a loving but outraged and 

"I hate, I despise your sacrificial angry husband, 
feasts. . . . Let justice roll down " I desire love (hesed) and not sacri- 
like waters and righteousness as fice; the knowledge of God and 
an everjflowing stream." ^ not burnt-offerings." ^ 

"Seek good and not evil, that ye " Sow for yourselves righteousness, 
may live . . . and establish jus- reap the fruit of love (hesed) ; 
Hce in the gate." ^ break up your fallow ground of 

knowledge that he may come and 
rain righteousness upon you." * 

Hosea complains ** There is no faithfulness {'emeth), 
nor love {hesed), nor knowledge (da^ath) of God in the 
land. There is nought but swearing and breaking 
faith, and killing, and stealing, and committing adul- 
tery." ^ These are the same social sins that Amos had 
denounced. But one member of the trinity of moral 
qualities, whose absence Hosea deplores, was never 
mentioned by Amos — the ** knowledge of God." To 
understand thereby an intellectual apprehension of 
divine requirements would be a mistake. Not to 
*'know," as here used, means not to **care for," or not 
to *'have intercourse with." ^ 

Hosea means by '* knowledge of God" the serious 
endeavor to maintain respectful and loving reli- 

* Am. 5:21/. 

2 Hos. 6: 6; "more than burnt-offerings," R.V., is not according to the 
text and destroys the force of the original. The translators tried to save 
a place for sacrifice in spite of Hosea. 

3 Am. 5:14, 15. 

* Hos. 10: 12, according to the LXX. Cf. Hos. 4:1. 
5 Hos. 4:i#. 

* Cf. Baumann, "Yada* und seine Derivate," ZAW, no ff. (1908). 
The Hebrew meaning of the word has been carried over into English in 
the Biblical phrase, "he knew his wife," etc. Cf. also I Sam. 2: 12, where 
Kittel (HSAT, p, 382) rightly translates . . . " nichtswurdige Menschen, 
die sich urn Jahwe nicht kilmmerten." 



156 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

gious intercourse with Jahveh. Hence, when he com- 
plains that there is "no knowledge of God in the 
land," he does not have ignorance in mind, but de- 
liberate and culpable neglect of Jahveh's will as it was 
then understood. It cannot be denied that Hosea, 
at this point in his theology, is phraseologically de- 
pendent on the prevailing physical mode of thought 
according to which Jahveh is the husband and owner, 
the haaly of the land. The fruitfulness of the soil, the 
increase of the flocks, and the growth of the popula- 
tion are evidence of a harmonious relationship. An 
estrangement is followed by drought, famine, and 
death. 1 Thus wedlock becomes his symbol for religion, 
whoredom for idolatry, and "knowing Jahveh" is 
terminology borrowed from the Semitic vocabulary 
of sex relations, for the purpose of designating accept- 
able religious intercourse with Jahveh. "The spirit 
of whoredom is within them and they know not (i.e., 
care not about) Jahveh." ^ He declares there is a 
false and a right way of maintaining relations with 
Jahveh ; the former is by sacrifice and burnt-offerings, 
the latter by love and the knowledge of God. The fore- 
going explanation shows why Hebrew parallelism can 
employ knowledge of God and love as practical equiv- 
alents. The scheme of marital symbolism which forms 
the framework of his sermons accounts for his choice 
of these expressions. 

Once the word "knowledge" occurs in an absolute 
1 Hos. 4:3; cf. also 9: 14. 2 Hos. 5:4. 



PIONEERS OF A NEW ERA 157 

sense, and in a connection in which it seems to be 
equivalent to ''the law {torah) of your God." ^ This 
raises the question how much importance Hosea at- 
tached to the administration of justice as a religious 
requirement. Ordinarily torah, during the pre-exilic 
period, referred to the traditional precedents or deci- 
sions of customary law. The so-called Book of the 
Covenant, Ex. 20-23, is one of the earliest written col- 
lections of such decisions. They were of divine origin, 
according to popular belief, and included both civil 
and ceremonial law. From ancient times it was the 
peculiar duty and prerogative of the priests to dispense 
justice. Where possible, this was done by precedent 
according to the traditional digest of "statutes," 
which it was the duty of the priests to know. In new 
and difficult cases, it seems, the priests also had recourse 
to the sacred lot,^ or rendered judgment according to 
the assumed principles underlying existing decisions.^ 
The general prevalence of bribery, and the depravity 
of the priesthood, made this system peculiarly liable 
to abuse. Since the priests were custodians also of 
ceremonial law the sacrificial system afforded them 
another opportunity to profit by the imposition of sac- 
rificial fines. This fact must be taken into account 
in connection with the prophetic crusade against the 
sacrificial system. 

1 Hos. 4:6; cf. Guthe, Hosea, p. 7, in Kautzsch's HSAT. 

2 Cf. I Sam. 14:41 /., and art. "Urim and Thummim," by G. F. 
Moore in Ency. Bib. 

3 Cf. Ex. 18; Hos. 8:12. 



158 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

The maladministration of justice is one of the seri- 
ous and wide-spread sins in Israel which the prophets 
never tire of denouncing. It is difficult to suppose that 
Hosea did not have in mind these corrupt practices 
of the priests when he inveighs against them,^ however 
far his moral demands may outreach the formal ad- 
ministration of justice. They are the more culpable 
in his eyes because they are the recognized custodians 
of "decisions" whose patron and author is Jahveh. 
Marti infers, doubtless rightly, that the failure of the 
prophets to appeal to such torah collections as Hosea 
apparently knew ^ is to be taken as evidence that they 
did not consider their observance an adequate dis- 
charge of religious duty.^ Here also one must reckon 
with Hosea's transfer of emphasis from mere justice 
to that many-sided attitude of love toward God and 
man which is the source both of justice and of the 
gentler human virtues. Jahveh, declares Hosea, de- 
sires not the sacrificial cult, but the maintenance of 
those social virtues among Israelites which insure the 
stability of their society. Just as in human relations 
the fulfilment of a loved one's wishes passes from duty 
to privilege, so a sense of personal attachment to Jah- 
veh must transform a perfunctory into a spontaneous 
observance of his will. 

What the prophet conceived to be the particular 
content of that will it is not so easy to say. Nearly the 

1 Hos. 4:4-11. ' Hos. 8:12. 

* Marti, Geschichte der israelitischen Religion (5th ed.), p. 184. 



PIONEERS OF A NEW ERA 159 

same considerations apply here as were discussed under 
the heading of what Amos meant by "good/' The 
student who wishes to proceed historically must be 
prepared to admit that Hosea would have included, 
and did include, under the will of Jahveh demands 
which no enlightened conscience of to-day could pos- 
sibly accept as divine, except in so far as the operation 
of the divine spirit is believed to manifest itself even 
in the imperfect aspirations of the human soul after 
good. It must be remembered that the prophets un- 
consciously thought of God in terms of the highest 
in themselves, even as do the men of our time. But 
our conception of what is good and admirable in con- 
duct and personality has been refined by nineteen 
Christian centuries of philosophical and ethical devel- 
opment. If what we now conceive to be the unity of 
men's highest ideals proves but an inadequate repre- 
sentation of the divine, how much less could Hosea and 
his contemporaries, amid the crude moral environ- 
ment of the eighth century B.C., be expected to portray 
the eternal acceptably with colors borrowed from 
their own feelings, experiences, and convictions! It 
is not surprising, as we shall see, that he fell into some 
errors which it is our duty to recognize as such. 

Obviously, the hoped-for reward of piety is for Hosea, 
as for Amos, the prosperity of the nation and its pres- 
ervation. One cannot help marvelling at the manner 
in which the prophets transformed into a potent factor 
of civic moral progress, this eagerness for social, ante- 



i6o THE OLD TESTAMENT 

mortem benefits from religion. Hosea's own deepening 
ethical conception of Jahveh as the guardian of civic 
righteousness has given him a keen eye for the moral 
failings of his people. Justice, social corruption, re- 
liance on a Canaanitish Jahveh-cult, and foreign poli- 
tical alliances, he thinks, have left Jahveh no alter- 
native but the destruction of the nation. But the 
language in which he expresses this conviction, as a 
threat from Jahveh, is so full of savage passion that it 
grates on the ear: ** Therefore am I to them a lion; as a 
leopard will I watch by the way; I will meet them as 
a bear that is bereaved of her whelps, and will rend 
the caul of their heart; then will I devour them as a 
lion, like a wild beast tear them in pieces." ^ In two 
other passages the barbarous slaughter of women and 
children, a common incident of Semitic warfare, is 
placed in prospect as a manifestation of Jahveh's 
undiscriminating vengeance.^ 

These judgments, attributed to God in the Old Tes- 
tament, are rarely anything else than actual or antici- 
pated occurrences translated into acts of Jahveh, and 
considered in the light of primitive human justice — 
half punishment and half outrage. The punishment of 
children for the sins of the fathers presented no ethical 
difficulty under the group morality system of the time. 
Hosea was not far enough along on the road to indi- 
vidualism to question the justice of such punishment. 
The Hebrew prophet believed that earthquakes and 
* Hos. 13:7, 8, 2 fjos. 10:14; 13:16, 



PIONEERS OF A NEW ERA i6i 

eclipses of the sun could be warded off as easily as a 
pestilence — by the recovery of Jahveh's favor; for 
all were manifestations of divine wrath. The modern 
knows that the pestilence is in his own power if he can 
but find and destroy the microbe; that earthquakes 
are not sporadic irruptions of divine punishment ; and 
that a solar eclipse is a harmless phenomenon obeying 
laws so regular that the astronomer can foretell its 
advent to a second. 

The foregoing considerations have directed atten- 
tion to figures of speech, used about God or put into his 
mouth, that may become a source of immoral con- 
ceptions about him. This danger is especially great 
under the old static view of revelation, which still 
lies as a tacit assumption behind the preaching of 
many pulpits, and by force of traditional momentum 
carries along nearly the entire Biblical instruction of 
the young. Thus it happens, through ignorance of the 
facts of Israel's moral development on the one hand, 
and a false view of revelation on the other, that de- 
plorably crude and immoral ideas about God are 
still imparted as the *'word of God." The corrective 
lies in realizing the fact that the prophets naively at- 
tributed to God their own feelings and sentiments, 
which naturally did not rise at all points superior 
to the moral and aesthetic limitations of their age. 
''Jahveh said unto Hosea, go take unto thee an im- 
pure wife," 1 illustrates, for instance, a not uncommon 

1 Hos. 1:2. 



i62 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

practice of Hebrew prophets to sanction the beginning 
of a course of events by the outcome. * Hosea, brood- 
ing over his domestic sorrow, viewed it in the light 
of his later ministry as his divine call, — God's rear- 
most thought. But it does not follow that he was ac- 
tually divinely directed to marry a woman preordained 
to prove unfaithful to him, in order that this bitter 
experience might prove helpful to him in his ministry. 
Both the teaching of Jesus and a deeper religious 
philosophy require us to dissent from a theory of de- 
terminism that makes God operate with evil in order 
to effect his purpose. We face an element here, in 
Hosea's conception of God's providence, that was 
borrowed from his time. That is its historical justi- 
fication. But for its literal use and interpretation in 
these days there is no justification except that of ig- 
norance. A declaration based on similar naive presup- 
positions, and put into the mouth of God, is the follow- 
ing: " I have given thee a king in mine anger, and have 
taken him away in my wrath." ^ The service of the 
Bible to the higher Christian culture of our time must 
suffer grievous harm if such passages are used by the 
unthinking to propagate immoral ideas about God. 

Hosea's depiction of Jahveh as an injured husband 
gave a new impulse to the possibly already existing 
disposition to represent him as actuated by feelings 
of jealousy.^ Since jealousy implies an attitude toward 

^ Cf. Is. 6:8#. and Jer. 32:8. 2 Hos. 13:11; cf. Ezek. 20:25. 
» Cf. Kuchler, Der Gedanke des Eifers Jahwes im A.T., ZAW (1908), 
p. 42 ff. (Ex. 20: 5; 34: 14; and Josh. 24: 19 may be later than Hosea.) 



PIONEERS OF A NEW ERA 163 

rivals, and must be reckoned among the ignoble pas- 
sions, its attribution to God, the Absolute, should 
now be accounted an intolerable anthropopathism. 
Hosea's use of the idea, however, may be taken, among 
other things, as evidence that he still believed in the 
reality of other gods. Other primitive ideas, brought 
over from an earlier period, survive in his thought. 
He regards Palestine as the **land of Jahveh," and 
assumes that in Assyria the food of the Israelites will 
be in a state of "pollution,*' because it is impossible to 
consecrate it there by dedicating the prescribed por- 
tions to Jahveh.^ Apparently Jahveh was still believed 
to be inseparable from Palestine ; in at least one speech 
of Jahveh Hosea makes him refer to Canaan as **my 
house," 2 from which the Israelites are to be driven 
forth into exile. Hosea, therefore, holds the same in- 
tramundane view of Jahveh's relation to the world 
that we found in Amos. It follows that, like the latter, 
he is not a monotheist, but a henotheist. Since they 
were practically contemporaries, the evidence on this 
point in their writings is mutually confirmatory. 

In his polemic against the Canaanitish Baal cult, 
with which Jahveh was being worshipped at the high 
places, Hosea condemns particularly the employment 
of images ^ representative of Jahveh. One can hardly 
be far wrong in recognizing this fact as evidence of a 
growing sense of Jahveh's spirituality, or rather of the 

1 Hos. 9:3. 4- ^ Hos. 9:15. 

* Mostly bull images, contemptuously referred to as "calves," per- 
haps on account of their diminutive size. Hos. 8:4-6; 10:5; 13:2. 



i64 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

supersensuousness of his being. Other questions in^ 
volved in the prophetic crusade against the high 
places are taken up in connection with the Book of 
Deuteronomy. It must suffice here simply to state 
that the sacrificial cult and the high-places he is 
attacking under the name of Baal worship are not a 
form of foreign idolatry but the official Jahveh wor- 
ship of his time. 

Hosea furnishes an interesting illustration of the 
abrogation of one '*Thus saith the Lord" by another. 
The ninth and tenth chapters of II Kings record Jehu*s 
treacherous massacre of the family of King Ahab. 
Elisha is represented as having instigated the deed. 
All the revolting details of the long series of murders 
are recorded. Then comes to Jehu the word of Jahveh, 
presumably through Elisha: ** Because thou hast ex- 
ecuted well that which was right in mine eyes, and 
hast done unto the house of Ahab according to all that 
was in my heart, thy sons of the fourth generation 
shall sit upon the throne of Israel." ^ This surprising 
sanction of so horrible a deed illustrates anew the fatal 
facility with which even a prophet like Elisha identi- 
fied the will of Jahveh with the rude morals and blood- 
thirsty passions of the day. Hosea, standing upon the 
higher moral ground of a later century, declares his 
conviction that the deed of Jehu was wicked and 
ruinous, and thus repudiates the sanction of Elisha. 
Very different is the word of Jahveh that comes to 

* II Kings io:30;cf, 9:1/. 



PIONEERS OF A NEW ERA 165 

him: " Call his name Jezreel ; for yet a little while, and 
I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of 
Jehu, and will cause the kingdom of the house of Is- 
rael to cease." ^ It is a cancellation of development, the 
expression of a more enlightened ethical judgment. 
Comparison of these two passages furnishes an example 
of the moral value of historical criticism. Both theol- 
ogy and ethics have suffered at the hands of earnest 
but misguided literalists who accept Jahveh's alleged 
sanction of Jehu*s murders, or Elijah's slaughter of 
the priests of Baal, as the will of God. The result of 
Biblical instruction which rests upon such immoral 
presuppositions about God cannot be otherwise than 
intellectually and morally pernicious. 

We have already called attention to an ignoble by- 
product of the literary device by which Hosea pre- 
sents Jahveh in the character of a jealous husband. It 
remains in conclusion to note a lasting advantage. 
The thought of Jahveh's love, though often obscured, 
never again leaves the theology of Israel. A theory 
of human conduct, expressed or implied, that postu- 
lates temporal national well-being as the goal of ethics 
and the reward of piety, must be largely motivated by 
prudential considerations. In the days of Amos and 
Hosea, goodness as an ideal, to be achieved primarily 
for its own sake, still hides behind nearer and more 
tangible, but also more transient ideals. The finer 

^ Hos. 1:4; notes the assumption that God punishes the whole nation 
for the sin of one of its kings. 



i66 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

moral distinctions of an individualistic theory of 
human conduct are wanting, and the feeling of individ- 
ual responsibility must have been vague. But love, 
even in the Hebrew sense of the word, looks toward 
individualism. Therefore Hosea took a long stride 
forward when he declared that the love of God should 
be the mainspring of human conduct. He drew the 
larger circle which included that of Amos. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE PROPHET OF HOLINESS 

Isaiah hen-Amoz 

Among the men whose genius and devotion bright- 
ened the far-off centuries of Israelitish history there is 
no figure more conspicuous nor a mind more brilliant 
than that of Isaiah ben-Amoz. There are at least four 
different aspects which his life and writings present to 
the student. Whether one considers his career as a 
statesman, as a reformer, as a poet, or as a theologian, 
one finds in each case abundant material for thought. 

As a statesman he first came into prominence during 
the Syro-Ephraimitic invasion, bravely trying to save 
his country from disastrous political entanglements. 
To him as to other Hebrew prophets, the affairs of 
politics were not something apart from his mission, for 
he lost no opportunity to place his hands upon the un- 
steady political scales in which the destinies of his na- 
tion were swaying. Had the Athenian patriot Demos- 
thenes sketched his ideal of a statesman with Isaiah 
in mind it could hardly have resembled the Hebrew 
prophet more closely. There is good reason to think 
that on two supreme occasions his firmness and advice 
were all that prevented the collapse of the Judean state 
a century before it finally came. 



i68 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

Or is it in the capacity of reformer that one desires 
to study him? — to hear him thunder out his tremen- 
dous invectives against greed and injustice, drunken- 
ness and idolatrous superstitions. It would scarcely be 
possible to find anywhere a more scathing arraignment 
of unjust wealth concentrated in the hands of a few than 
the sixfold denunciation beginning: ''Woe unto those 
who join house to house, who add field to field till there 
is no more room, and ye are settled alone in the land." ^ 
Here also his profound insight into the causes of na- 
tional decay has had many sad vindications in the 
downfall of states whose institutions had been under- 
mined by these insidious vices. 

Less often is Isaiah mentioned as a poet. Yet in this 
particular capacity he far outstrips every rival in the 
field of prophecy. Unfortunately, the revisers of our 
English Bible have given no hint that nearly the whole 
of Isaiah's writings is in poetry, for while they have 
adopted the metrical form of arrangement for Job and 
the Psalms, they have retained the prose form of ar- 
rangement even for those of his prophecies which as 
poetry stand unsurpassed in the literature of the He- 
brews. 

Not less eminent was Isaiah ben-Amoz as a theolo- 
gian. But the very symmetry of his powers embar- 
rasses one in the attempt to point out his special con- 
tribution to Israel's growing knowledge of God. The 
highly poetical character of his language, too, makes 

1 Is. 5:8. 



THE PROPHET OF HOLINESS 169 

the student doubt at times the propriety of drawing 
theological inferences from what is evidently not the 
product of theological reflection. But this considera- 
tion applies in other cases, also, though to a less degree, 
and must be allowed to operate as a caution rather 
than as a deterrent. The fact remains that Isaiah has 
exerted a profound influence upon the religious thought 
of Israel, and has enriched all the liturgies of Christen- 
dom with the products of his consecrated genius. For 
even the modern worshipper, when he desires to speak 
of the holiness and majesty of God, can find no lan- 
guage more exalted than that which Isaiah puts into 
the mouth of the adoring seraphim : — 

"Holy, holy, holy, is Jahveh of hosts; 
The whole earth is full of his glory!" i 

Isaiah's remarkable description of the vision of his 
call, and his frequent references to the manner in which 
he believed Jahveh's will to have been communicated 
to him, affords an appropriate opportunity for a word 
about the Hebrew conception of revelation. The reader 
will do well to disabuse his mind at once of the notion 
that it always meant a definite thing. The word itself 
is an abstraction of occidental origin, with a variety 
of theological connotations that probably never en- 
tered the mind of an Old Testament writer. The effort 
to comprehend the extremely varied contents of the 
Hebrew Scriptures under an exclusive theological de- 
finition of revelation has proved, and will continue to 

1 Is. 6:3. 



170 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

prove, futile for the simple reason that life cannot be 
fixed in a formula. 

The Old Testament recognizes three sources of di- 
vine guidance: the "word" of the prophet, the "coun- 
sel" of the sage, and the "law," or "instruction" of 
the priest.^ The first dealt primarily with matters of 
social ethics; the second with prudential precepts for 
the practical guidance of everyday life; and the third 
with ceremonial and ritual regulations. The prophecies 
of Amos, the Book of Proverbs, and the Book of Leviti- 
cus are typical illustrations respectively of the literary 
products of these three classes of persons. Of these the 
first only is pertinent to our present inquiry into the 
Hebrew idea of revelation. 

It is interesting to observe that in the course of cen- 
turies not only the content of prophetic preaching 
changed, but that the prophets gradually modified 
their view of the manner in which God was thought to 
reveal his will to them. Our earliest information about 
the order of the prophets shows that they lived in re- 
ligious communities or societies, the members of which 
were known collectively as ^'B'ne hannebi'im,'* i.e., 
"sons of the prophets," in the sense of members of a 
prophetic guild. This peculiarity they are believed to 
have had in common with similar religious societies 
among neighboring nations, for instance among the 
Phoenicians. Besides, in primitive times both Hebrews 
and Phoenicians believed a dervishlike frenzy to be 

1 Cf.Jer. i8:i8. 



THE PROPHET OF HOLINESS 171 

the mark of divine inspiration, or rather, possession, 
inasmuch as they spoke of it as a "seizure." Occa- 
sionally an artificial stimulus was employed in order 
to induce this psychic condition. Elisha, for instance, 
employed a musician on a certain occasion. "And it 
came to pass when the minstrel played, that the hand 
of Jahveh came upon him." ^ 

This naive possession-theory of prophecy for a long 
time constituted the answer of popular philosophy to 
the question "How does Jahveh communicate his will 
through the prophet? " At a time when these psychic 
states of religious frenzy were generally regarded as 
evidence of spirit-seizure, and when no other answer to 
this question was either known or conceivable, primi- 
tive prophetism naturally yielded in act and thought 
to this theory. Probably because almost any one could 
by auto-suggestion, or by external stimulus, produce 
within himself the desired psychic state, and because 
the frenzied dervish prophetism of SauFs time could no 
longer satisfy an age of higher culture, the authenticity 
of these ecstatic states as evidence of divine inspiration 
came to be doubted. Dreams and visions, recognized 
as means of divine communication from time imme- 
morial, gradually began to supersede ecstasy in the 
economy of prophetism. 

But experience shows that primitive religious beliefs 
are practically indestructible so long as the race sur- 
vives. It is not surprising, therefore, that occasional 

1 II Kings 3: 15. 



172 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

instances of ecstasy-prophetism are met with among 
literary prophets even after the collapse of Hebrew 
nationality. But from the time of Isaiah onward there 
is increasing evidence of a more rational interpretation 
of the means by which the Divine Will was believed to 
be communicated. Among them are to be reckoned 
the teaching of personal experience, flashes of insight 
prepared for by communion with God and long medita- 
tion upon the ethical relation of Jahveh to Israel ; and 
last, but not least, the lessons of history — the first 
half-unconscious identification of Jahveh's word with 
the deductions of the prophet's reflective thinking. 

Finally reason and reflection began to assume a large 
place in prophetism, although it continued to appear 
in the rhetorical and figurative dress peculiar to an 
earlier period of prophecy. This entire course of de- 
velopment illustrates the gradual elimination of super- 
stition and unreason from religion. One remarkable 
fact about this rationalizing process in Old Testament 
prophecy is the gradual abandonment of a sharp dis- 
tinction between the human agent and the divine 
spirit thought of as localized. 

A moment's reflection will show that the possession 
theory of prophetism is so primitive that it lies alto- 
gether outside of modern categories of thinking. It 
tacitly implies that God is within the world and a part 
of it, being limited by time, by space, and by matter. 
Neither our philosophical idea of transcendence, nor 
that of immanence, has any real point of contact with 



THE PROPHET OF HOLINESS 173 

this conception of God, which is essentially animistic 
and intramundane. Of God so conceived it is impos- 
sible to say that he is absolute, omnipotent, or omni- 
scient. This difficulty began to be felt by the later 
prophets, and it led to the gradual abandonment of the 
possession theory and ecstatic prophetism. Neverthe- 
less they continued to believe that abnormal states of 
consciousness, happening irregularly and according to 
no perceptible law, were evidences of the divine afflatus. 
The New Testament idea that the human and the di- 
vine may be indistinguishably and inseparably united 
is a product of later thought and deeper experience; 
a conviction which it is safe to say never dawned on 
the mind of any Hebrew prophet, even the latest. 

Isaiah, like his predecessors, must still be reckoned 
among those who prophesied in a state of ecstasy. He 
refers to the hand that overpowered him at the mo- 
ment when Jahveh's message came to him.^ But a 
state of ecstasy in which a man could produce pro- 
phetic poems of such high literary merit as are most 
of Isaiah's, could have had little in common with the 
dervish-frenzy of earlier days. This remains true even 
though we suppose that the literary finish of his poems 
was due to elaboration at the time they were written 
down. 

The remarkable sixth chapter of his book, in which 
he describes the vision of his call, exhibits some sug- 
gestive phenomena. He allowed several years to pass 

1 Is. 8:11. Cf. Ezek. 3:22 ; 8:i. 



174 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

before he wrote down an account of the experience that 
constituted his call, for the opening words imply that 
another king is upon the throne, and that the record 
is a reminiscence. The result of reflection upon these 
years of unsuccessful preaching is woven into this 
reminiscence. It appears in the conviction that his 
warnings and appeals are destined to fall upon un- 
heeding ears. The case is analogous to that of Hosea 
who, after his wife had proved unfaithful, saw in the 
experience that led to his choice of her the will of God. 
Brooding over his domestic sorrow and interpreting 
it in the light of later events as God*s arriere pensie he 
wrote: " Jahveh said, Take unto thee an impure wife." 
So Isaiah hears through his experience the same voice, 
saying: "Go, and say to this people: Hear on, but un- 
derstand not! See on, but perceive not! Make fat this 
people's heart, make dull their ears, and besmear their 
eyes, lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their 
ears, and their heart understand, and their health be 
restored.'* ^ 

From this naive theory of determinism, so fre- 
quently found in the Old Testament, a deeper religious 
philosophy requires us to dissent. We shall feel less 
reluctance in doing so when we see that this was an 
element in Isaiah's conception of God's rule that was 
borrowed from the thought of his time. It was a wide- 
spread belief of antiquity that God first renders him 

* Is. 6: 9, 10. The text quotations of Isaiah are mostly from the ex- 
cellent translation of T.K. Cheyne, SBOT. 



THE PROPHET OF HOLINESS 175 

mad whom he would destroy.^ Ethical individualism 
had not yet arisen, and our modern concern about 
the dependence of individual responsibility upon free 
will was equally unknown. The prophet speaks in 
communal terms throughout. The explanation that 
Isaiah intended to express the New Testament idea 
that men, after listening to his message, were rendered 
worse by sinning against the light, is a piece of modern 
individualistic theologizing of which he was almost 
certainly innocent. 

But the point of chief interest in this connection is 
the fact that reflective reasoning begins to have a larger 
place among the means by which God's will was be- 
lieved to be communicated to the prophets. In short, 
there is found, even during this period of objectivity in 
religion, a half -unconscious recognition of the fact that 
revelation comes not as a voice out of the flame or the 
cloud, but wells up out of the consciousness of the 
prophet, comes through the normal processes of men's 
minds. As Isaiah once expresses it, *' Jahveh of hosts 
hath revealed himself in mine ears." ^ 

The task to which Isaiah, in the main, devoted his 

life was to lift the nation's conduct out of a religion of 

ceremonial into a religion of character. Intuitively he 

selected the most strategic approach to his problem. 

He endeavored to make his conception of Jahveh's 

holiness the regulative ideal of conduct. Holiness is 

1 Cf. I Kings 22: 20 Jf.; Ex. 7:3 (P). These passages move within 
the same circle of ideas. 
* Is. 22: 14. 



176 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

to him the most outstanding characteristic of God. 
Mystical divine beings — seraphim — nowhere else 
mentioned in the Old Testament, guard his presence 
and proclaim him trebly holy. Equally significant is 
the fact that Isaiah coins for Jahveh a new title, the 
Holy One of Israel. 

But if the idea of holiness is to be regulative in the 
sphere of ethical conduct it must possess ethical signifi- 
cance and the worshipper must have some notion of 
what it is. Certain it is that originally holiness did 
not signify the possession of any moral quality. Even 
the Phoenicians described their gods as holy, and in 
Isaiah's time there were found at Hebrew sanctuaries 
the utterly degraded wretches known as the ''holy 
ones." Smend has furnished a definition which best 
comprehends the extremely varied uses of the word. 
*'Kodesh,'' he says, "originally meant about as much 
as divine potency." Persons or things connected in any 
way with the deity, or the sanctuary where the numen 
was supposed to dwell, became ''holy." In popular 
belief they became charged with a mysterious power 
peculiar to the deity, transmissible like electricity or 
contagion, and dangerous to any one who was not in a 
state of ritual fitness. 

In this use of it the term "holy" has evidently its 
original ritual significance only and is the exact equiva- 
lent of the Latin sacer^ the Greek hagios, and the Poly- 
nesian taboo. As such it describes not a particular 
phenomenon of Hebrew religion, but one that belongs 



THE PROPHET OF HOLINESS 177 

to religion in general. The fundamental idea, as in all 
systems of taboos, is that of separation for special re- 
ligious use or behavior. Perhaps the most instructive 
single chapter in the Old Testament to illustrate this 
point is the one on the Nazirite and his head of holy 
hair.^ It is the more instructive because it exhibits the 
very element in the idea of holiness from which the 
prophets were breaking away. In comparatively late 
times, under priestly influences as the book of Leviticus 
shows, it suffered deterioration again in the direction 
of this earlier meaning. The priestly injunction, as- 
cribed to Jahveh, *' be ye holy for I am holy " means no 
more than ''keep yourselves in that state of ritual 
taboo which is acceptable to me." ^ 

The primary rule of action, therefore, which the 
primitive thought of holiness suggested was the nega- 
tive one, ''Do not touch." ^ In consequence the word 
has never lost the idea of inapproachableness and in- 
violability as an element of its meaning. This notion 
is by no means absent in Isaiah's characterization of 
Jahveh*s holiness, and explains why he naturally used 
it as a companion attribute for Jahveh's majesty. But 
Amos, as we have seen, had shifted the centre of gravity 
in Israel's religion from the ceremonial to the moral. 
In declaring Jahveh an ethical personality this cere- 

* Num. 6:1-21; cf. Judg. 16:17. 2 Lev. ii: 44. 

' Cf. Num.4: 15,20; Ex. 19:12, 13; Ex. 29:37; Num. 16:36-40; Ezek. 
44:19; II Sam. 6:6-7; I Sam. 6:20. Whether objects or their super- 
natural owners were first declared "holy" is still a matter of debate; the 
attribute probably was first applied to things and then transferred to the 
deity. 



178 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

monial attribute of the Godhead necessarily had to 
acquire ethical significance also. It must be accounted 
Isaiah's most distinguished service to the religion of 
Israel that he gave to Jahveh's holiness a fulness of 
ethical meaning which made it possible to say : "The 
holy God shows himself holy through righteousness '' ^ 
In order that we may not overlook important land- 
marks of prophetic doctrine let it be observed, in pass- 
ing, that the pre-exilic and post-exilic prophets drew 
practically opposite inferences from the premise im- 
plied in the above quotation. While the former looked 
for the manifestation of Jahveh's holiness in a Judg- 
ment of destruction upon Israel at the hands of the 
heathen, the latter looked for it in the destruction of 
the heathen and the restoration of Israel. ^ Isaiah's 
doctrine of the remnant,^ and his promise of a time 
when the Assyrian rod of Jahveh's punitive anger will 
itself be broken,^ were no doubt influential factors in 
the development of the later expectations. But if 
Isaiah could have witnessed the search of some of these 
epigones for holiness through ritual etiquette, he would 
doubtless have poured out the vials of his indignation 
upon their self-righteous pretence.] 

1 Is. 5 : i6. This verse doubtless is part of an insertion by a later hand, 
but it expresses Isaiah's implicit thought precisely. Unfortunately both 
the A. V. and the R. V. miss the force of the passage altogether by mak- 
ing God "sanctify" himself, whatever that may mean. 

2 Ezek. 20:41/; 28: 25; 38: 16, 23. "I will be sanctified in you in the 
sight of the nations" will be more intelligible if we render "I will show 
myself holy [by proving my power] on your behalf before the eyes of all 
nations." 

3 Is. 7:3; cf. 8: 18. * Is. 10:5; cf. 14:24, 25. 



THE PROPHET OF HOLINESS 179 

Holiness through righteousness, — that was the 
countersign of Isaiah's religion. It was not the holi- 
ness of the auditors to whom he was preaching. They, 
like the revellers castigated by Amos in the north, 
thought they were worshipping a God to whom moral 
conduct was a matter of relative unimportance ; whose 
first interest was to observe the quality and number of 
sacrifices offered to him, and who was ever ready to 
resent an infringement of the etiquette of approach 
which he had instituted. When people with this con- 
ception of God were visited by misfortune, or by a 
national calamity, it was a sign to them that he 
was offended, either by inadequate sacrifices, or by 
an intentional or unintentional infringement of cere- 
monial law. The only remedy which suggested itself 
to them was more sacrifices and a more rigid adminis- 
tration of the cultus. Thoughts of reform did not go 
beyond the externalities of religion because the idea 
of Jahveh^s holiness, which they were anxious enough 
to respect, had little or no ethical content. 

That the holiness which Isaiah ascribes to Jahveh 
does not refer merely to his inapproachableness, exalta- 
tion, and supremacy may be shown by reference to 
many passages. It is this attribute of God which he 
considers outraged by the social and judicial corrup- 
tion of his time. In the presence of the Holy One of 
Israel he feels that he, as Jahveh 's spokesman, is him- 
self *'a man of unclean lips,'* and he "dwells in the 
midst of a people of unclean lips." Despite the sym- 



i8o THE OLD TESTAMENT 

bolical cleansing performed by one of the seraphim the 
figure of speech describes not ceremonial but moral 
unfitness, for on a subsequent occasion it is "this peo- 
ple" of whom he hears Jahveh say, they ''draw near 
me with their mouth and with their lips honour me, but 
their heart they keep far from me, and their fear [i.e., 
worship] is but a precept of men learned by rote.'** 
They are unwilling to respect or appreciate the pro- 
phetic issue between cultus and character, between the 
appearance and the reality of religion. They deride 
*'the purpose of Israel's Holy One" as expounded by 
Isaiah on the basis of these eternal distinctions. Its 
inevitable fulfilment, he declares, means 

"Woe unto those who call evil good, and good evil, 
Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness, 
Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter." ^ 

We have already alluded to the fact that Isaiah's 
companion attribute for the divine holiness, and 
one which he makes almost equally prominent, is 
the glory (kabhod) of Jahveh. The term is practically 
equivalent to our word majesty and was used in this 
sense to describe the pomp and power of kings. In the 
earlier records of Israel's religion it had no perceptible 
ethical significance even when predicated of God. 
Moved by fear of deadly consequences the Jahvist lets 
Moses see only the rear of Jahveh's ''glory," which is 
physical in its manifestations; so physical, indeed, 
that a post-exilic priestly elaborator of Mosaic tradi- 

1 15.29:13. 2 Is. S:i8#. 



THE PROPHET OF HOLINESS i8i 

tions even makes the light of Jahveh's kabhod com- 
municate itself to Moses' face.^ Similarly the volcanic 
theophanies of the exodus and all the more violent 
disturbances of nature were interpreted as exhibitions 
of Jahveh's glory. 

Isaiah's conception of Jahveh's kabhod, also, dis- 
closes unmistakable evidence of origin amid the cata- 
clysms of nature. Earthquake and tornado are blended 
in his picture of "the day of Jahveh," which is to be 
signalized not only by the abasement of human pride, 
but by the destruction of everything that might minis- 
ter to the same. The cedars of Lebanon and the oaks 
of Bashan; mountains, towers, battlements, and ships, 
are destined to go down before "the terror of Jahveh 
and the splendour of his majesty when he arises to 
strike awe throughout the earth." ^ 

When Isaiah declares that the whole earth is full 
of Jahveh's glory, he evidently meant both more and 
less than most commentators have ascribed to him. 
Though a resident of the Hebrew metropolis, he shared 
with Amos, the herdsman, some ancient prophetic 
anti-cultural prejudices. A judgment of destruction 
upon that which is lofty and impressive in nature and 

1 Ex. 34:29-35. By "my goodness," which Jahveh declares (33:19, 
JE) he will cause to pass before Moses, is not meant moral goodness as 
a study of the use of tuhh shows. It has the concrete meaning of "good 
things," and is here used in the sense of physical splendor or beauty. 
Hesed would have been the word to use for moral goodness. Cf . Hosea. 

2 Is. 2: 10-19. This probably is Isaiah's earliest extant prophecy. The 
phrase "splendour of his majesty" must betaken here as synonymous 
with "glory." The "terror of Jahveh" corresponds to the German Got- 
tesschrecken, the Panic-fear of the Greeks. 



1 82 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

art, in order that " Jahveh alone may be exalted," is 
neither ethical nor a tribute to divine power and 
greatness. 

It is a significant and remarkable fact, however, 
that Isaiah ethicizes and spiritualizes the conception 
of Jahveh's glory in relation to man. ''Jerusalem 
comes to ruin, and Judah falls," he writes, ''because 
their tongue and their deeds are against Jahveh to 
defy the eyes of his glory. . . . The spoil of the desti- 
tute is in your houses. What mean ye by crushing 
my people, and by grinding the face of the desti- 
tute?" ^ 

Had Isaiah done no more than to invest the two di- 
vine attributes of holiness and glory with these new 
and deeper ethical meanings, he would have made an 
invaluable contribution to Hebrew moral development. 
But he more than trebled the force of their appeal to 
the emotions by the striking literary felicity of his state- 
ments, and by the air of sublime dignity and mystery 
with which he surrounds the transcendent personality 
of the Holy One. The average Jerusalemite thought of 
Jahveh as inhabiting the innermost recess of Solomon's 
temple; but of the gigantic royal figure of Isaiah's 
vision it is said, "The train of his [robe] filled the 
temple." In the popular apprehension Jahveh's glory 
was so linked with the temple that even a later Psalm- 
ist ^ still confesses, "I looked upon thee in the sanc- 
tuary, to see thy power and thy glory"; but the cor- 

1 13.3:8-15. 2 Ps. 63:2. 



THE PROPHET OF HOLINESS 183 

responding sanctuary of Isaiah's vision is the whole 
earth, and it is full of Jahveh's glory. 

Thus Isaiah recreated the very forms of Hebrew 
thought about God, replacing petty survivals from 
more primitive times with symbols of almost cosmic 
grandeur. If in his earliest prophecies there is occa- 
sionally in Jahveh's actions a suggestion of irritabil- 
ity, it is offset in the prophet's later years by the invest- 
ment of the Holy One with that beautiful serenity 
which is the reflection into the heavens of Isaiah's 
own quiet faith in God. During the stormy days of 
Egyptian intrigue and Assyrian aggression, when every 
hour seemed to bring forth new agitation and alarm, 
Isaiah wrote ** Jahveh hath said unto me, I will be still, 
and will look on in my place, like the flickering ether 
in sunlight, like dew-clouds in the heat of harvest." ^ 
What apter symbols of divine tranquillity could there 
be than sunlit summer spaces and the seemingly sta- 
tionary, high cirrus clouds from which the dew was 
believed to fall. 

It seems natural that the creator of this reposeful 
conception of God should have been the first to set 
forth quiet trust in God as a religious requirement. 
It is the nearest approach in the Old Testament to the 
Christian idea of faith. '*Be wary, and keep thyself 
calm," said Isaiah to panic-stricken King Ahaz during 
the Syro-Ephraimitic invasion. '* If ye will not believe, 
surely ye shall not be established." ^ And the same 

Ms. 18:4. 2 Is. 7:4, 9. The latter statement contains a word- 

play which might be rendered, "No confiding, no abiding." 



1 84 THE OLD TESTAMENT; 

Jahveh whom he pictured serene as a summer day 
above the intrigues and commotions of the little king- 
dom bids him say, near the end of his career, "By 
turning and remaining quiet ye would have been de- 
livered; in quietness and [pious] trust ye would have 
found your [true] strength. But ye refused." ^ 

Finally, Isaiah is an unsparing opponent of that 
mechanical, sacerdotal conception of religion which 
makes it consist in sacrifices. With a directness and 
sureness unattained by any of his predecessors Isa- 
iah asserts the ethical character of Jahveh by point- 
ing out that he requires of his worshippers conformity 
with a moral standard, and not observance of feast 
days and ritual. Unaccustomed to such demands as 
Isaiah is making upon their conduct in the name of 
religion, the people treat him with indifference, and 
even scorn. He calls them 

. . . "rebellious people, lying sons, 
Sons who will not hear the direction of Jahveh; 
Who say to the seers: See not! and to the prophets: 

prophesy not to us true things! 
Speak to us smooth things, prophesy delusions! 
Turn from the way, go aside from the path ; 
Trouble us no more with Israel's Holy One." 2 

But Isaiah does not compromise with duty, nor 
abate one jot of his conviction about the truth. Others 
may lull their fears with patriotic phrases about Jah- 
veh's help, or dazzle their eyes with false visions of se- 
curity. But he abides by his conviction that true 

1 Is. 30:15. 2 Is. 30:9/. 



THE PROPHET OF HOLINESS 185 

religion must concern itself with the right and wrong 
in human conduct, and that Jahveh's judgments hinge 
upon the criterion afforded by their lives. 

In the first chapter, known sometimes as "The 
Great Arraignment," he asserts in passionate language 
the inherent falseness of the popular conception of 
God, and of the character of his demands. Sacrifices, 
the blood of beasts, temple-treading, new moons, 
sabbaths (full moons?), assemblies — such religion is 
worse than worthless. Then, in language that glows 
with moral fervor, he reaches the climax of his oration 
in a simple statement of his own conception of religion 
in terms of moral conduct : — 

"Your hands are stained with blood [of sacrifices]. 

Wash you, make you clean, let me see the evil of 
your doings no more. 

Seek out justice, chastise the violent. 

Right the orphan, plead for the widow." ^ 

So far as we can tell, the last spoken words of Isaiah 
that have come down to us were addressed to the 
joyous inhabitants of Jerusalem, as they crowded the 
walls of the city to watch the doughty warriors of Sen- 
nacherib's army disappearing among the hills. It was 
a mournful spectacle to him, because they had not 
been turned back with the sword, but with silver and 
gold. "Thy slain are not slain with the sword, nor 
fallen in battle," ^ said the prophet. Such dead might 

* Is. 1 : 15/. The blood which stains their hands must mean the blood 
of sacrifices. Murderers, as also Duhm remarks, would not have been 
invited to begin the work of social reform. The very blood which they 
think will make "atonement" for them is the symbol of their irreligion. 

'^ Is. 22:2. 



1 86 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

still be undefeated. But his living contemporaries 
never even tried to stand their ground in battle for 
prizes which are above comfort and above life. 

Once more there arises before his vision the day in 
which the Lord "did call to weeping, and to mourning, 
. . . but, behold, joy and gladness, slaying oxen and 
killing sheep, eating flesh and drinking wine : [for they 
said] Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we shall die. 
And Jahveh of Hosts hath revealed himself in mine 
ears. Surely this iniquity shall not be forgiven you till 
ye die, saith the Lord, Jahveh of Hosts." ^ They chose 
the sacrificial feasts, a mechanical religion of cere- 
monial, and in this choice of ceremonial above char- 
acter, the prophet read their doom. 

It cannot be said that Isaiah added anything essen- 
tially new to the message of his predecessors. But his 
political sagacity, his oratorical power, the splendor 
of his diction, and above all the exquisite literary 
quality of many of his prophetical poems, give not 
only greater force and amplitude to his message : they 
place him in a class by himself. He trebled his power 
by the law that 

"A thought 's his who kindles new youth in it, 
Or so puts it as makes it more true.'* 

1 Is. 22: 12-14. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE MONOJAHVISM OF DEUTERONOMY 

For reasons set forth in previous chapters we are 
unable to agree with those who find a clear recognition 
of monotheism in the pre-Deuteronomic prophets. It 
becomes necessary at this point to face the question 
whether even the Book of Deuteronomy itself teaches 
monotheism. The well-known passage of chapter six, 
^'Hear O Israel, Jahveh our God is one Jahveh" has 
long been regarded as the leading proof- text of Mo- 
saic monotheism. General abandonment of the Mosaic 
authorship of Deuteronomy, and its recognition as a 
priestly-prophetical compromise of the seventh cen- 
tury B.C. have shifted the question to a later period. 
But one who desires to trace the development of the 
idea of God in Israel must nevertheless address him- 
self to the task of determining whether the above- 
mentioned passage teaches monotheism. Since Deut- 
eronomy is not a unity, such an enquiry involves the 
consideration of possible differences between earlier 
and later parts of the book. Elsewhere we have sought 
to show that the crucial passage of the sixth chapter 
teaches not monotheism, but a transitional form of 
the Hebraic idea of God for which we have coined 
the irregular, but necessary, word "monojahvism." ^ 

* Cf. Bade, Der Monojahwismus des Deuteronomiums, ZAW, ii (1910). 



i88 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

This Deuteronomic stage of development is so clearly 
the product of specific historical conditions that it 
seems expedient to pass them briefly in review. 

Recent years have shed much archaeological light 
upon the extraordinary mixture of Baal cult and Jah- 
veh worship found in the earlier literature of the Old 
Testament. Our chief sources of information are the 
excavations of Macalister, Sellin, and Schumacher. 
The Amarna tablets, also, furnish the historical back- 
ground for a considerable period in the fourteenth 
century B.C. 

While the evidence is not decisive there is good reason 
to believe that Jahveh was worshipped among the 
Canaanites as a local divinity in pre- Israeli tic times.^ 
In that case he must have figured as a local Baal long 
before the Hebrew prophets began their crusade of 
reform. It is not easy to determine when the Baal 
cult of ancient Palestine originated. But it seems cer- 
tain that it was well established there before the end 
of the second millennium B.C. 

The Deuteronomic editors of the Book of Judges, 
rewriting the history of ancient Israel according to the 
pragmatic standard of the twenty-eighth chapter of 
Deuteronomy, explain its varying political fortunes 
by assuming a see-saw of national apostasies and re- 
pentances. The service of Baal brings oppression, and 

1 Cf. Marti, Jahwe und seine Auffassung in der dltesten Zeit, ThSK, 
(1908), pt. 3. 

Ward, The Origin of the Worship of Jahveh, AJSL, vol. xxv, no. 3 
(1909). 



MONOJAHVISM OF DEUTERONOMY 189 

return to Jahveh, deliverance. As history this rep- 
resentation is not only inherently improbable, but 
demonstrably erroneous. In the results obtained by 
archaeological and historical research there is nothing 
that suggests the occurrence of sweeping changes of re- 
ligion on Palestinian soil. On the contrary, the evi- 
dence is in keeping with those parts of the Old Testa- 
ment which imply that the native population, together 
with the characteristics of its culture, was gradually 
absorbed by the Israelites. This blending with cognate 
racial types, continuing through centuries, had an ef- 
fect upon religion and culture very different from that 
which would have resulted from a brief campaign of 
military subjugation and extermination. 

That climatic, social, and economic conditions always 
are determining factors in shaping the development 
of a religion is an accepted fact among students of the 
history of religion. It explains, incidentally, why the 
agricultural population of Canaan saw in its numerous 
local deities, the so-called Baals, patrons of agriculture, 
and why the Hebrews, when they became agricultur- 
ists, invested their own Jahveh with this patronate. 
Hosea, in the second chapter, furnishes an instructive 
account of the transfer. Wayward Israel is repre- 
sented as saying: "I will go after my lovers [Baals] 
that give me my bread and my water, my wool and 
my flax, mine oil and my drink." . . . "She did not 
know that I [Jahveh] gave her the grain, and the new 
wine, and the oil.'* Naturally those ritual practices 



190 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

in which the products of the land played a part de- 
veloped into more and more prominence, for worship- 
pers invariably attribute to their deities their own 
preferences in the matter of sacrificial gifts. The prac- 
tice of offering the first fruits of the field was intro- 
duced by the agricultural Canaanite, not by the no- 
madic Hebrew. 

The centre of Canaanite culture is obviously to be 
sought in the fruitful plains of Palestine. This explains 
and confirms the tradition that the invading Israelites, 
being nomads and half-nomads, first secured a foot- 
hold in the Palestinian hill-country. In the more 
densely settled agricultural districts the Canaanites 
were strong enough to withstand the invaders for a long 
period. What has nearly always happened under simi- 
lar circumstances took place there, also, in the course 
of time. The superior culture of the native population, 
of whom it is reported as early as the reign of Thut- 
mose III, 1500 B.C., that they had more grain than 
sand on the seashore, entered into the life of the new- 
comers. 

Every reader of the Old Testament knows how 
appreciatively Hebrew tradition speaks of Canaan's 
fortified cities and the agricultural wealth of the land. 
It is Israel's tribute of admiration to a culture more 
complex and more developed than its own. Seven 
centuries after the exodus the Deuteronomist mounts 
the pulpit behind the dim figure of Moses and utters 
to his contemporaries warnings against what has al- 



MONOJAHVISM OF DEUTERONOMY 191 

ready taken place. "And when Jahveh thy God shall 
bring thee into the land which he sware unto thy 
fathers ... to give thee, great and goodly cities, which 
thou buildedst not, and houses full of all good things, 
which thou filledst not, and cistern hewn out, which 
thou hewedst not, vineyards and olive-trees, which 
thou plantedst not, and thou shalt eat and be full; 
then beware lest thou forget Jahveh. . . . Thou shalt 
fear Jahveh thy God; and him thou shalt serve, and 
shalt swear by his name. Ye shall not go after other 
gods, of the gods of the peoples that are round about 
you." 1 

This, as we shall see, was an indirect indictment of 
the prevailing worship of Jahveh-Baal, long denounced 
by the eighth- century prophets as essentially Ca- 
naanitish. The dangers against which Moses might 
fitly have cautioned were realized in the conditions of 
the Deuteronomist's time. Jahveh had been identi- 
fied with the local Baals ; their names, bull-images, rites, 
and sanctuaries had been appropriated so completely 
in the popular cult of Jahveh that the Deuteronomist 
can see in it only a worship "of the gods of the peoples 
that are round about." 

It was a correct instinct that led the Deuteronomist 
to connect the corruption of Israel's religion with the 
appropriation of Canaan's material civilization. Ca- 
naanite culture and the local cults of the Baalim were 
so deeply interfused that it was practically impossible 
1 Dt. 6:10-15. 



192 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

to adopt the one without the other. Hence the passage 
of the Israelites from nomadism to peasant life in- 
volved a corresponding change in their religion. The 
possession of a common tongue, the incorporation of 
entire Canaanitish clans ^ into the Israelite common- 
wealth, and a fundamental resemblance between the 
two cults must have greatly furthered the process of 
fusion. 

Observing how the physical changes of their life 
seemed to entail religious changes which they greatly 
dreaded, the prophets of the eighth century began to 
denounce certain luxuries and refinements of their 
Israelite contemporaries as sinful. They knew them 
to be products of that Canaanite civilization which was 
corrupting Jahvism. The religious order of the Recha- 
bites carried this reaction even to the point of absten- 
tion from agriculture, viticulture, wine, and settled 
abodes. To them pure Jahvism and pure nomadism 
were inseparable. 

But these protests were powerless to stop the triple 
fusion of people, religion and civilization which con- 
tinued uninterruptedly from the time of the Judges to 
that of the Kings. Israel conquered, but was Canaan- 
ized ; Jahveh conquered, but was Baalized. 

The word haal is not a proper name, but a descrip- 
tive term ^ meaning lord, owner, or master. As such 

^ Cf. Josh. 9. The story of the Gibeonltes seems to be the attempt 
of a later age to account for the long independence of this clan and its con- 
nection with the Solomonic temple. 

2 The feminine form baalah means "mistress"; hence baal was also 



MONOJAHVISM OF DEUTERONOMY 193 

It was, among the Western Semites, the common 
designation of any male deity. One immediately sus- 
pects, what indeed was true, that a great variety of 
local divinities masqueraded under the title. They were 
distinguished from each other by some attribute, by 
adding the name of the locality, or by using the deity's 
proper name. The Baal of Tyre was the same as the 
god Melkart; the Baal of Haran was the moon-god 
Sin. By analogy Jahveh was the Baal of Israel, or of 
Palestine. While in strictness the term haal needs to be 
completed with the mention of the place or people 
whose ''Lord" the particular deity is, this was not al- 
ways done. The inhabitants of a particular city or dis- 
trict knew as a matter of course the identity of the 
Baal venerated at their sanctuary. Hence he was sim- 
ply referred to as ''the Baal," i.e., the Lord. When the 
fusion of Jahvism and Baalism began, this neutral 

designation could be treated like a blank Mr. , 

enabling the Hebrew to supply tacitly or explicitly the 
name of Jahveh, and yet retain in his worship the 
entire ceremonial apparatus of the average Canaanite 
sanctuary. 

In a number of personal names the Old Testament 
has preserved decisive evidence of such identification 
of Jahveh with "the Baal." Ishbaal ("man of Baal"), 
Meribaal ("hero of Baal"), and Beeljada ("Baal 

commonly used in the sense of "husband," "master." "Baal of an ox" 
means "owner of an ox"; to be the "baal of a woman" is "to be mar- 
ried." Ex. 21:3. 



194 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

knows") ^ were sons of Saul, Jonathan, and David who 
certainly meant Jahveh by Baal. After the Deutero- 
nomic reform, editors, determined to eradicate all evi- 
dence of the hated cult, mutilated these names in the 
second book of Samuel by changing ^'Baal" into 
*'bosheth" (i.e., shame), and into "El" (i.e., God). 
But the early Greek versions and the first book of 
Chronicles have preserved them correctly. In the 
same category belongs Baal-jah ^ C* Jah is Baal"), the 
name of one of David's heroes, in which the identifica- 
tion of Jahveh with Baal is made directly. Finally, a 
passage of Hosea ^ testifies that Jahveh was called 
"Baali,"i.e., "My Baal." 

Marti undoubtedly is right in regarding the appear- 
ance of bands of wandering prophets toward the end 
of the period of the Judges, as further evidence of re- 
ligious fusion. For, while at this time they are in the 
service of Jahveh, they are to be regarded as descend- 
ants of similar bands that formerly were attached to 
the cult of Baal. This conclusion is forced upon us by 
the disparaging tone in which they are mentioned,^ by 
the dervishlike frenzy which they took for divine in- 
spiration, and by the evident resemblance between 
these bands and the prophets of the Tyrian Baal in the 

1 II Sam. 2:8 #.; I Chron. 3:33; 9:39 (= Ishbosheth). II Sam. 
4:4 ff.; cf. I Chron. 8:34; 9:40 (^ Mephibosheth). II Sam. 5:16 
(=Eljada); I Chron. 14:7 (=? Beeljada). 

2 R.V., Bealiah ; I Chron. 12:5. 

3 Hos. 2: 16. The evidence of the passage qi| this point is not af- 
fected by questions of authorship. 

* I Sam. 10:9/. 



MONOJAHVISM OF DEUTERONOMY 195 

days of Elijah. Samuel's connection with these bands 
may be taken as evidence of influences by which their 
wild fanaticism was gradually purified. 

Turning, now, to the writings of Amos and Hosea, 
one finds in them precisely the kind of syncretism which 
the conditions described above would have led one to 
expect. The local divinities, or Baals, have been ab- 
sorbed by Jahveh. The Canaanite high places have 
become his sanctuaries. Even their origins have been 
domesticated in Hebrew tradition by the stories of the 
Jahvists and Elohists who report appearances of Jah- 
veh that are supposed to have given the patriarchs 
occasion to found them. The rites formerly employed 
to propitiate the Baals as patrons of agriculture are 
now used to secure the favor of Jahveh, who has taken 
their place. Hosea makes no secret of his conviction 
that the cultus of the high places, notably at Bethel 
and at Gilgal, consisted of Canaanite religious customs 
which the Israelites had adopted with the civilization 
of Palestine and transferred to Jahveh. 

Because the Deuteronomist writes from the point 
of view of Moses, he has to use the future tense in his 
attack on actual conditions. If one bears this fact in 
mind the following passage affords striking confirma- 
tion of Hosea's charge: "When Jahveh thy God shall 
cut off the nations from before thee . . . take heed to 
thyself that thou be not tempted to imitate them . . . 
and that thou inquire not after their gods, saying. How 
did these nations worship their gods, in order that I 



196 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

also may do likewise? Thou shalt not do so unto Jah- 
veh thy God: for every abomination to Jahveh, which 
he hateth have they done with respect to their gods; 
for even their sons and their daughters do they burn 
in the fire to their gods." ^ It is a picture of his own 
times which the Deuteronomist delineates in these 
words. 

The legislation of Deuteronomy particularly pro- 
scribes three things which the prophets had execrated 
as heathenish infiltrations into popular Jahvism : — 

I. Human sacrifice. Early Jahvism, as is well 
known, regarded child sacrifice as a divine require- 
ment. Among the ordinances set before the Israelites 
on the authority of God is this: ''The first-born of thy 
sons thou shalt give unto me." The original intent of 
the passage is made unmistakable by the following: 
^^ Likewise shalt thou do with thine oxen and with thy 
sheep." 2 The results of Palestinian excavations have 
proved the prevalence of child sacrifice among the 
Canaanites. If the claim of the prophets, that this 
practice was unknown in Israel before their settle- 
ment in Canaan, is correct, the fourth commandment 
of the Jahvistic decalogue, *' Every first-born is mine," 
attributed to Jahveh in the Mosaic legislation, is of 
purely Canaanite origin. In any case Deuteronomy 
counts child sacrifice an "abomination to Jahveh," ^ 

* Dt. 12:29, 30; cf. 18: 10. 

2 Ex. 22: 29, 30. Redemption by means of an animal is a later prac- 
tice enjoined in an addition to the Jahvistic decalogue, Ex. 34: 19-20. 
^» Dt. 12:31. Cf. Ex. 34:19; II Kings 16: 3; Jer. 7:31; 19:5; Ezek. 



MONOJAHVISM OF DEUTERONOMY 197 

and Jeremiah makes him say, ^'I commanded it not, 
neither came it into my mind." Jeremiah's denial, let 
it be observed, is aimed at a wrong done on JahveKs 
alleged authority. Apparently there survived even in 
his day some who claimed divine authority for child 
sacrifice. The prophet Ezekiel was one of these, and 
he clings to the tradition in spite of the fact that he is 
forced to admit that Jahveh did what was "not good" 
when he gave the ordinance.^ The well-known story 
of Abraham and Isaac makes dramatic capital out of 
the feelings of a father who has received from Jahveh 
the command to sacrifice his only son. It is a grievous 
charge against much popular religious education of our 
time that it still uses this immoral portraiture of God 
as if it were true, thus sinking below the moral level of 
Jeremiah and Deuteronomy. 

2. Religious prostitution. Both male and female 
temple prostitutes, known as the ''holy ones," were 
anciently attached to sanctuaries of Jahveh. Amos 
and Hosea denounce this form of impurity as they 
observed it at Israel's sanctuaries, ^ and the Deuteron- 
omist expressly provides that "there shall be among 

16: 20, 21 ; also Gen. 22. " Molech " is probably an intentional corruption 
of "Melek," king, giving it the vowels of the word hosheth, shame; like 
Baal, it was a term equally applicable to any deity, and was certainly 
applied to Jahveh. The representation of the Deuteronomists that sac- 
rifices of children among the Hebrews were made only to alien deities is 
clearly unhistorical. The hosheth of Jer. 3 : 24 and 11:13 is shown to be 
the same as Baal or Melek, both of them designations applied to Jah- 
veh. Lev. 18:21 and 20:2-5 convey the impression that children were 
sacrificed to Jahveh as Melek even in the temple at Jerusalem. 

1 Ezek. 20:25, 26. 

2 Am. 2:7; Hos. 4:14. Cf. I Sam. 2:22. 



198 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

Israelitish girls or boys none who becomes a temple 
prostitute." The proceeds of their infamous traffic 
went customarily into the treasury of the sanctuary. 
This explains the curious figure of speech by which a 
late prophetic writer promises that "the gains and 
hire" of Tyre as a harlot "shall be dedicated to Jah- 
veh." ^ Undoubtedly the religious prostitutes who 
were quartered in the temple of Jerusalem at the time 
of Josiah's reformation were the source of no small part 
of "the money that had been brought into the house of 
Jahveh," and which Hilkiah is directed to use for the 
repairs of the temple. ^ It is this form of consecrated 
licentiousness which the Deuteronomist, scornful of 
such profits, expels from Jahvism. "Thou shalt not," 
he writes, " bring the hire of a harlot or the wages of a 
dog [male temple prostitute] into the house of Jahveh 
thy God for any vow: for even both these are an abom- 
ination unto Jahveh thy God." * 

This class of persons corresponds to the hierodules 
of Greek and Roman temples. They figured largely in 
the cult of the Babylonian Ishtar and the Canaanite 
Astarte.** Since it seems improbable that nomadic 
Jahvism was acquainted with this vile institution, we 
may assume that it came into Israel's religion through 
fusion with that of Canaan. 

1 Is. 23: 17, 18. 2 Q^ II Kings 22:4 and chap. 23. 

' Dt. 23:18; one passage, 22:5, forbids the wearing of garments to 
disguise sex, probably another regulation designed to check religious 
prostitution. 

* These two are essentially the same. The Old Testament Ashtoreth 
is an intentional perversion to suggest bosheth, "shame." 



MONOJAHVISM OF DEUTERONOMY 199 

3. Images of Jahveh. Certain forms of expression in 
the Old Testament can have arisen only in connection 
with the worship of an image. To ''appear before 
Jahveh," to ''behold" or to "seek" his "face," or even 
to "mollify the face of Jahveh" are expressions that 
betray a concrete origin,^ however much they may 
have been spiritualized in later times. The numerous 
Hebrew terms employed to designate images must also 
be taken into account. But the long-continued warfare 
of the prophets against the use of images furnishes the 
most decisive evidence of their commonness both in 
public and in private cults. 

The favorite symbol of the Canaanite Baals was the 
bull-image. Doubtless many Canaanite sanctuaries 
were provided with such images as a matter of ancient 
custom. The subsequent identification of Baal with 
Jahveh caused them to be appropriated as representa- 
tions of Jahveh. In the polemic of the prophets these 
bull-images were styled "golden calves," perhaps in 
contemptuous allusion to their diminutive size.^ 

Taken literally this slurring phrase has become re- 
sponsible for the popular misconception that the 
Israelites, with beef-witted perverseness, lapsed into 
actual calf -worship, and that on the most trivial pre- 
texts. On the contrary, the " two calves of gold " which 
Jeroboam is reported to have set up in the northern 
sanctuaries of Bethel and Dan were examples of the 

* Cf. Ex. 34:23; 32:11; I Sam. 13:12, "I have not made the face 
of Jahveh pleasant." See Wellhausen, Reste arab. Heidentums, p. 105. 
^ Hos. 13:2. 



200 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

already well-known bull-images used to represent Jah- 
veh-Baal, and the worship accorded to them was the 
official Jahveh-worship of the time. Even in the ac- 
count of Aaron's connection with bull-worship, the 
proclamation of a feast to Jahveh clearly shows that 
the writer censured the worship of the image as a 
perversion of Jahveh-worship, not as an act of heathen 
idolatry. The bull-Image was not worshipped as such, 
but was to them a representation of Jahveh. Where- 
fore they acclaimed it with the words: "This is thy 
God, O Israel, who brought thee up out of the land of 
Egypt." ^ The extant figure of a bronze bull, recovered 
in East Jordanic territory, may be taken as a fair illus- 
tration of these portable images, which in some cases, 
probably, were carved out of wood and overlaid with 
gold. 

For various good reasons it seems unlikely that the 
Israelites employed the bull-image as a symbol for 
Jahveh before their religion syncretized with that o/ 
Canaan. But it would be very unsafe to assert that 
Israel's religion was originally imageless. The super- 
stitious veneration bestowed upon the ark indicates a 
type of religiousness that had by no means risen above 
the use of concrete symbols. 

1 Ex, 32:4. JE makes this form of idolatry begin with Aaron at the 
time of the exodus. Although this narrative is almost certainly unhis- 
torical it is prudent to entertain the possibility that the Minaeans may 
have employed the bull-image for the moon-god. In that case the Israel- 
ites might have made their first acquaintance with this form of image 
worship at the time of the exodus. Cf. Nielsen, Die altarahische Mond- 
religion und die mosaische Ueberlieferung (1904), p. 112. Alsp Barton, 
Semitic Origins, p. 201. 



MONOJAHVISM OF DEUTERONOMY 201 

The Deuteronomic crusade against images and 
sacred pillars necessarily had the effect of enhancing 
the religious importance of the ark in the temple at 
Jerusalem. A reform involving the destruction of 
particular, instead of all, idolatrous objects only falls 
under the suspicion of being not entirely disinterested. 
Jeremiah appears to have felt that a radical reform, 
such as the great prophets might have countenanced, 
should have included the repudiation of the ark, for 
he covets the time when it will be held worthless.^ It 
must, however, be regarded as a very significant con- 
cession to prophetic feeling that the ark of Jahveh is 
pointedly ignored in Deuteronomy. Only once is it 
indirectly referred to as *'an ark of wood" made to 
serve as a receptacle for the "tables of stone." ^ This 
is the more remarkable since the earlier traditions of 
JE and the post- Deuteronomic ritual of P invest the 
ark with rigid taboos and treat it as if it contained the 
numen praesens itself. One cannot help feeling that 
revival of idolatrous regard for the ark in post- Deu- 
teronomic times would have been avoided if it had been 
explicitly included among the objects of cult that were 
to be abolished. 

But the reform party gained at least one strategic 
advantage by securing the abolition of all symbols of 

1 Jer. 3:16. 

2 Dt. 10: 1-3. Marti and others regard Dt. lo: 8, 9, as a redactor's ad- 
dition. P differs from D in alleging that Bezaleel, not Moses, was the 
maker of the ark. For fuller treatment of the subject cf. Dibelius, 
Die Lade Jahve's (1906), and Marti, Geschichte der israelitischen Religion 
(1907), pp. 79-81. 



202 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

Jahveh*s presence save only the ark. It was an act that 
added to the effect of the appointment of one sanctuary 
for ritual worship, for it helped to demolish the popular 
belief that there was more than one Jahveh. The baal- 
ized Jahvism described above was bound to become 
polytheistic through the identification of Jahveh with 
a number of local divinities. The process might be de- 
scribed as an absorption of the local Baals by Jahveh. 
So in parts of Italy the absorption of ancient local 
divinities by the Virgin Mary has fostered among the 
ignorant classes the belief that there are different ma- 
donnas. In the experience of the writer it is no un- 
common thing to find in Naples and its environs pious 
common folk by whom the various famous local ma- 
donnas are held to be distinct individuals. This might 
be described as polymadonnism in the same sense in 
which we shall speak of polyjahvism. 

Despite centuries of editing, the older strata of 
Hebrew tradition still exhibit clear evidence of a popu- 
lar religion which assumed the existence of more than 
one Jahveh. One naturally looks for such phenomena 
in literature that has sprung more immediately from 
the folk-mind. But even in more thoughtful circles 
the disposition to assume a plurality of Jahvehs ap- 
pears to have been strongly felt. In the story of Ab- 
salom's rebellion the success of the intrigue turns upon 
the assumption that the Jahveh of Hebron is not the 
same as the Jahveh at Jerusalem. Although the sacred 
ark was at Jerusalem, David found nothing strange in 



MONOJAHVISM OF DEUTERONOMY 203 

the request of Absalom that he be permitted to fulfil 
in the presence of the Jahveh at Hebron the vow he had 
made on foreign soil.^ Under the Deuteronomic con- 
struction of religion the proper reply would have been 
that there was but one Jahveh, and that he must be 
worshipped only at Jerusalem. But neither David nor 
the recorders of this tradition knew anything about 
a ^'Mosaic'* law of Deuteronomy and its doctrine of 
the single sanctuary. 

Similar testimony is afforded by a passage of the 
prophet Amos. It may be regarded as certain that 
Amos 8:14 refers to the Jahveh of Samaria, the Jah- 
veh of Dan, and the Jahveh of Beersheba.^ The present 
form of the Hebrew text is the result of a process, famil- 
iar to students of Semitic religion, by which the names 
of deities were mutilated or obscured. Such intentional 
obscurations are the words translated "sin" ^ and 
"way," by which neither a Hebrew nor any other 
Semite would have thought of swearing. Behind these 
pious mutilations of the text lurk the different local 
Jahvehs [Baals] worshipped at these sanctuaries. 

This general view of the Jahveh- Baal religion is 
borne out by traditions that have transmitted indi- 

1 II Sam. 15:7. So also H. P. Smith, Int. Crit. Com., p. 341 : "It 
is evident as in the case of Baal, that the Jahveh of a particular place 
seemed a distinct personality in the common apprehension. Although 
the ark was at Jerusalem, David did not find it strange that Absa- 
lom should want to worship at Hebron." 

2 Gen. 21: 33 not only carries the founding of the sanctuary at Beer- 
sheba to pre-Israelitic times, but reports a distinctive name for the deity 
worshipped there. 

* Dt. 9:21 refers to the calf symbol of Jahveh as "your sin." 



204 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

vidual names for the Jahvehs worshipped at particula> 
sanctuaries. Hagar *' called the name of the Jahveh 
that spake unto her El Roi." * A Jahvistic narrator 
knew that under a sacred tree at Beersheba it still was 
customary to worship Jahveh as El 01am. ^ The ap- 
propriation of an old Canaanite high place at Ophra 
is narrated in the Book of Judges, and incidentally we 
learn how the deity there received the name Jahveh 
Shalom.^ Analogous religious phenomena require us 
to assume a similar origin for the names of Jahveh- 
jireh, El-Bethel, and Jahveh-nissi. They are the origi- 
nal names of local divinities worshipped by the ancient 
Hebrews. Only at a later, and theologically more re- 
fined, period were these names transferred to the altars 
under which the numen was supposed to dwell.^ These 
titular distinctions, that doubtless mark the absorp- 
tion of various local Baals, are unmistakable evidence 
of a popular religion which naively distinguished be- 
tween various local Jahvehs. 

Passing over the period during which the eighth 
century prophets, Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah, assailed 
the unethical ceremonial religion of their time, the 
student finds himself upon the threshold of changes 
that foreshadow Deuteronomy. Micah alludes to an 
evidently numerous party opposed to the prophets, 
The latter had been preaching an impending political 
calamity, a message to which the new party replied 

1 Gen. 16:13. ^ Gen. 21:33. 

8 Judg. 6:24. * Gen. 22: 14; 35:7; Ex. 17:15. 



MONOJAHVISM OF DEUTERONOMY 205 

with its watchword '' Jahveh is among us; no evil can 
come upon us/* ^ This faction seems to have inter- 
preted the liberation of Jerusalem from the army of 
Sennacherib, in 701 B.C., as a wonderful demonstra- 
tion of Jahveh's power, exerted for the protection of 
his favorite city and temple. Jeremiah draws a lesson 
of evil omen for Jerusalem from the destruction of the 
ancient sanctuary of Shiloh where Jahveh "caused his 
[my] name to dwell at the first." ^ But his opponents 
could point with equal propriety to the fact that the 
northern sanctuaries had already passed into the hands 
of the enemy as evidence that Jerusalem was the 
only inviolable seat of Jahveh. Thus the closing years 
of the eighth century prepared the way for Deuteron- 
omy and the centralization of worship at the royal 
sanctuary. The Book of Jeremiah shows how supersti- 
tious confidence in the inviolability of the temple and 
the temple-city as Jahveh's residence had by that 
time developed into a dogma.* 

There is general agreement now that two differ- 
ent tendencies merged in the reformation of Josiah. 
If, on the one hand, the restriction of worship to 
Jerusalem was the result of the prophets' activity, it 
satisfied, on the other hand, the above-mentioned in- 
violability party whose views, as the writings of Micah 

1 Micah 3: II. Cf.Jer. 6:14, 17; 7:10. Perhaps Am. 5: 14 and Micah 
2:6 are pertinent, also, in this connection. The latter verse should be 
emended to read: "Prophesy ye not," they are ever preaching. "One 
must not prophesy (i.e., preach) about such things. The house of Jacob 
will not be put to shame." 

2 Jer. 7: 12-15. ' Cf. Jer. chaps. 7 and 26. 



206 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

and Jeremiah prove, were rejected on ethical grounds 
by the prophets. Isaiah had prophesied that Jahveh 
would turn Jerusalem into an altar dripping with the 
blood of the slain, ^ and Micah, that Mount Zion would 
be visited by the same fate that had turned into ruins 
so many sanctuaries in East Jordanic territory: *' Je- 
rusalem shall become a heap of ruins, and the temple 
mountain a wooded height." ^ 

The old prophetic party favored the Deuteronomic 
movement because the restriction of the sacrificial cult 
to Jerusalem, and the abolition of all other sanctua- 
ries, seemed to be the only effective means of stamp- 
ing out the Jahveh-Baal worship and some newly intro- 
duced Assyrian cults. Their endeavor was to reform 
the moral character of the people by reforming their 
religious customs. The outcome was an utter defeat 
of their purpose. 

This was due to the fact that the reform movement 
also received the zealous support of the inviolability 
party, which was represented chiefly by the priests 
of the Jerusalem temple. For them the watchword, 
one Jahveh, one temple, and one priesthood, attached 
itself to interests that were decidedly personal. By 
proclaiming Jerusalem as the only and inviolable resi- 
dence of Jahveh they were increasing their income and 
enhancing the importance of their oflice. By the same 
act they denied the essence of prophetic religion which 
had constituted moral conduct not the temple and the 

*Is. 29:2, 3. 2 Micah, 3:12. 



MONOJAHVISM OF DEUTERONOMY 207 

cultus, the palladium of the people's safety. They did 
not even shrink from appealing to the newly found law- 
book of Deuteronomy in order to give themselves the 
appearance of orthodoxy in their opposition to Jere- 
miah.^ This was probably the first, but not the only, 
time that an orthodoxy, founded upon ignorant and 
selfish misinterpretation of Scripture, employed the 
achievements of braver fellow combatants in order to 
place them under fire from the rear. 

In any case it may be regarded as certain that Deu- 
teronomy did not spring from homogeneous motives 
either in its origin or in its introduction. Only with this 
understanding of the situation is it possible to explain 
the attitude of Jeremiah toward the new book of the 
law. He is the champion of ethics, his opponents of 
magic, in religion. Although the leading ideas of the 
prophets had found expression in Deuteronomy, in a 
conflict of that kind it was easier to use it in support 
of the inviolability doctrine of the priests, than of 
Jeremiah's ethical demands. 

This liability to abuse arose naturally out of the 
original purpose of the book, the restriction of worship 
to Jerusalem. The purpose of the author is most ap- 
parent in the twelfth chapter, which probably formed 

* Cf. Jer. 7:7-15 and 8:8, 9. The Book of the Covenant, Ex. 20-23, 
cannot be meant by the "law of Jahveh " in the latter passage, because it 
knows nothing about Jerusalem as the seat of the only legitimate sanc- 
tuary. The oneness of the sanctuary, however, is the central doctrine of 
Deuteronomy. Jeremiah opposes the unethical use which his enemies 
make of Deuteronomy in that they heighten the divine appointment of 
Jerusalem as the only legitimate place of worship into a guarantee of its 
perpetuity. 



2o8 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

the beginning of the original edition of Deuteronomy. 
In express contradiction of an earlier word of Jahveh ^ 
even famous old high places like Bethel, Hebron, and 
Gibeon are by implication declared never to have been 
legitimate places of worship. In fact all the sanctua- 
ries famed in Hebrew song and story, places where, as 
Jeremiah said of ill-fated Shiloh, Jahveh ** caused his 
name to dwell at the first," are outlawed and branded 
as imitations of Canaanite idolatry by reading back 
the law of the one sanctuary into the time of Moses. 
By this means Deuteronomy introduces a radical 
innovation under the guise of a reform. Worship is 
concentrated at the chosen sanctuary of Jerusalem 
and all the others are abolished. Driver pertinently 
observes that to us the limitation of public worship 
to Jerusalem may appear *'to be a retrograde step, 
and inconsistent with the author's lofty conception 
of the Divine nature." ^ The very nature of the pre- 
scription involved a particular emphasis upon place 
and ritual which the priests who were favored by the 
new regulation were keen enough to exploit in their 
own interest. The impulse which this gave to the de- 
velopment of legalism and sacerdotalism in Israel's 
religion proved it to be indeed a backward step. But, 
for a people given over to polyjahvism, fostered and in 
part originated by a multiplicity of sanctuaries, re- 
striction of worship to one sanctuary was the most ef- 
fective method of inculcating belief in one Jahveh, 
* Ex. 20:24. ' -f^^- ^^^i' Com., Dt.f p. xxix. 



MONOJAHVISM OF DEUTERONOMY 209 

We have shown at some length how the absorption 
of many local deities by Jahveh, and the consequent 
pilgrimages to many sanctuaries, had fostered a belief 
in different local Jahvehs. This naive polyjahvism, 
however, does not appear to have become self-con- 
scious until its existence was endangered. In a settled 
mode of life clan-feeling is strengthened by a sense of 
fond attachment to one's native land. This fondness 
of man for his surroundings was in Israel, as elsewhere, 
attributed also to the national God. As in the time 
of David, so also in later times there was a popular 
belief that he was inseparable from the land. This 
explains the readiness with which the inviolability 
party now asserted that Jerusalem, the only legitimate 
place of worship, was the particular dwelling-place of 
Jahveh in Palestine. 

But the founding of other sanctuaries, as narrated 
in Genesis, was equally associated with the belief that 
their numina were accessible within the sacred pre- 
cincts and that their activity proceeded thence. The 
Deuteronomic innovation involved so profound a 
change in the religious life of the nation that many 
voices must have been raised in protest even though 
they did no more than to reassert the words of that 
spokesman of Jahveh who said "in every place where 
I [Jahveh] record my name will I come unto thee and 
bless thee." The editors and compilers of the Deuter- 
onomic and priestly literature, however, have taken 
care to silence any such protests. 



2IO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

The best objection that popular religion could bring 
against the abolition of the high places was, either that 
different Jahvehs (Baals) were being worshipped at the 
different sanctuaries, or that the one Jahveh mani- 
fested himself in different ways at the various shrines. 
Both views probably found champions simultaneously, 
and the hortatory section (Dt. chaps. 6-11) would 
have proved well adapted to meet both objections. 
Whether or not these chapters are an addition made 
soon after 621 B.C. is immaterial in this connection. 
There can be no doubt that they were intended to in- 
culcate the faithful observance of the regulations de- 
vised to secure the concentration of worship at Jeru- 
salem. 

The foregoing discussion has made it apparent that 
a peculiar significance attaches to the Deuteronomic 
declaration of the oneness of Jahveh. According to 
Semitic modes of thinking the oneness of the sanctuary 
involved the oneness of the deity. In order to over- 
ride all opposition that may or might have come from 
champions of earlier usages and beliefs the Deuteron- 
omist declares, "Hear, O Israel, Jahveh our God is one 
Jahveh." 

But this declaration of the unity of Jahveh is not 
equivalent to monotheism, which precludes the exist- 
ence of other deities. The Deuteronomist still believes 
in the reality of other gods, although he subordinates 
them to Jahveh. It is best, therefore, to treat the 
Deuteronomic stage of development as a thing by itself, 



MONOJAHVISM OF DEUTERONOMY 211 

as the reduction of a hazy polyjahvism to an explicit 
monojahvism, and the depotentiation of other deities in 
the interest of Jahveh's supremacy. 

The correctness of this view is borne out by other 
considerations which have been ably urged by Budde.^ 
A series of Assyrian conquests, begun in the ninth cen- 
tury B.C., gradually led to complete subjugation of the 
Mediterranean coast lands. After the destruction of 
the northern kingdom, Judah became thoroughly 
Assyrianized during the long reign of Manasseh, who 
is mentioned among the vassals of Assyria in the in- 
scriptions of Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal. Zepha- 
niah denounces the adoption of foreign dress and cus- 
toms, inferentially Assyrian, while the second Book of 
Kings mentions the introduction of Assyrian forms of 
cult. The horses of the sun-god Shamash were kept in 
the chamber of a eunuch at the entrance to the Jerusa- 
lem temple, and on the roof were altars erected for 
the worship of ^'the host of heaven." From the fact 
that Deuteronomy particularly proscribes the latter, 
involving, as it did, the licentious worship of the god- 
dess Ishtar, one may infer that this form of Assyrian 
idolatry was especially rampant. The act of housing 
the gods of the Assyrian pantheon within the precincts 
and under the roof of Jahveh's sanctuary raises the 
question of the relationship into which they were 
brought to him. The most plausible supposition is 

^ Budde, Aufdem Wege zum Monotheismus (Rektoratsrede) , Marburg, 
1910. 



212 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

that the Assyrian deities were brought into subordi- 
nate relation to Jahveh as his guests. This involved 
the assertion of Jahveh's supremacy over the astral 
world, which was their particular sphere of manifes- 
tation. Latent tendencies toward such a development 
are discernible at an early period in the Song of Deb- 
orah, where *'from heaven fought the stars, from 
their courses they fought against Sisera," ^ and in a 
fragment of another ancient song in which Jahveh 
bids sun and moon stand still in order that Joshua 
may complete his victory. ^ 

At a later period Hebrew poets were especially fond 
of asserting Jahveh's power over sun, moon, and stars, 
and he becomes in particular the God of heaven. What- 
ever the phrase "God of Hosts" may have meant at 
other times, during the Assyrian period, when "the 
host of heaven" meant the starry host, it was almost 
certainly applied to Jahveh as the controller of the 
heavenly bodies. 

In brief, the evidence points to a subordination of 
the astral divinities of Assyria to Jahveh as the God of 
heaven. This explains the remarkable reasoning of the 
Deuteronomist according to which Jahveh has chosen 
Israel for his own peculiar service, but has assigned to 
other nations the worship of his subordinates, the astral 
divinities. "Take heed . . . lest thou lift up thine eyes 
unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun and the 
moon and the stars, even all the host of heaven, thou 
* Judg- 5:20. 2 Josh. 10:12. 



MONOJAHVISM OF DEUTERONOMY 213 

be drawn away and worship them, and serve them, 
which Jahveh thy God hath allotted unto all the 
peoples under the whole heaven." ^ It is in keeping 
with this view that he declares Jahveh to be the one 
to whom "belongeth heaven and the heaven of heav- 
ens the earth and all that is therein." ^ He is "God 
of gods, and Lord of lords, the great God, the mighty 
and the terrible." ^ 

This is not the language of monotheism.'* It is an 
attempt to define Jahveh's relation to other deities. 
They are his underlings and rule by his sufferance. 
Foreign nations come within the purview of Jahveh's 
interest only as servants of his vicegerents. Thus for- 
eigners are servants of servants, while Israelites have 
been elected to the service of the God of gods. 

Were one inclined to take a static view of scrip- 
ture and to interpret Deuteronomy as did the oppo- 
nents of Jeremiah, one might fitly argue that the theory 
set forth above leaves no room for our Christian enter- 



» Dt. 4:19. 

2 Dt. 10: 14. Marti, HSAT, renders ** heaven to its utmost heights." 

' Dt. 10:17. 

* Dt. 4:28, and 28 : 36, 64, refer to heathen gods as mere wood and 
stone, a characterization that may be taken to imply their unreaHty. 
Such an implication would involve the assumption of monotheism. How- 
ever, these verses occur in exilic additions to Deuteronomy. Cf. Marti, 
in HSAT, and Steuernagel, Einleitung, p. 197. — Dt. 29: 17 occurs in a 
supplementary part of D and may be a redactor's expansion. Dt. 4:35, 
39, belong to the same supplementary stratum as 4: 19 and, therefore, 
must be explained in harmony with the latter passage which clearly and 
decisively precludes monotheism. "There is none else beside him" then 
must mean there is no other god for Israel. The astral divinities whom 
Israelites worship beside him in the temple at Jerusalem have been 
allotted to foreign nations. 



214 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

prise of foreign missions, since they would be an inter- 
ference with divine decrees. If God has joined to- 
gether the heathen and their deities, why should man 
put them asunder? 

It is not surprising that the particularism of Deuter- 
onomy, in legalistic circles, did develop into a kind of 
Hebrew Monroe doctrine: Israel for Jahveh alone, 
Jahveh for Israel alone. Deutero- Isaiah and the large- 
hearted author of the Book of Jonah attempt to check 
the growing exclusiveness of Jewish orthodoxy, but 
with indifferent success. Ezra tears his hair when he 
learns that Jews have married foreign wives and de- 
mands that they shall put away both them and their 
children. The compilers of the Priests' Code do their 
utmost to make Hebrew history teach that God is in- 
terested only in the uncontaminated Jewish stock. By 
providing these views with divine sanctions they de- 
graded the idea of God and made it more difficult to 
secure recognition for the great fact of God's universal 
fatherhood. 

A peculiar phenomenon is the survival in exilic and 
post-exilic literature of modes of speech which con- 
tinue to imply that Jahveh divides the rule of the 
world with subordinate deities. In Ps. 82 the gods as- 
semble around Jahveh's throne, and are warned to 
exercise just judgment unless they expect to die like 
human beings. In the Book of Daniel ^ the depoten- 
tiated national deities appear as satraps of the heav- 
1 Dan. 10; 13 /. 



MONOJAHVISM OF DEUTERONOMY 215 

enly King Jahveh, as the patron angels of their re- 
spective nations. 

Inasmuch as Jeremiah ^ had already taken the final 
step beyond Deuteronomy by declaring that heathen 
divinities were "no-gods," and since in the Psalms ^ 
especially language implying a belief in the real exist- 
ence of other gods is coupled with declarations of their 
unreality, it seems safe to assume that some allusions 
to rival deities in the later literature of the Old Testa- 
ment are mere figures of speech. 

But after every allowance has been made on this 
score there remain passages which indicate the survival 
of polytheistic notions long after theoretical monothe- 
ism had made its appearance. This is in keeping with 
experience in other spheres of human progress where 
one observes the same overlapping of the old and the 
new, the primitive and the more advanced. 

The preceding discussion may be briefly summarized 
as follows: syncretism of the nomadic religion of the 
Hebrews with the agricultural religion of the Canaan- 
ites led to the adoption of the Canaanite sanctuaries, 
the fusion of Jahveh with the numerous Baals, and the 
introduction into the ritual of much that was origi- 
nally peculiar to the worship of the latter. Among 
the corrupt practices taken over from Baalism prob- 
ably are to be reckoned child sacrifice, the maintenance 
of male and female temple prostitutes, and the wor- 
ship of Jahveh under the form of a bull-image. 
» Jer. 2:11; 16:19, 20. 2 Ps. 96:4, 5; 97:7, 9. 



2i6 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

The Baals being many, and strongly individualized 
at various local shrines, where they bore proper names, 
their absorption by Jahveh necessarily led, in popular 
religion, to polyjahvism, i.e., to the splitting of Jahveh 
into Jahvehs. The different local priesthoods, each 
depending for its prosperity upon the popularity of its 
own particular sanctuary, would naturally encourage 
belief in the distinctness of rival Jahvehs. The Deu- 
teronomist significantly charges Aaron, the literary 
symbol of the Hebrew priesthood, with complicity in 
the establishment of the Baalized Jahvism which he 
combats. 

A prophetic reaction against all that seemed foreign 
in life and in worship found literary expression in Deu- 
teronomy during the reign of Manasseh. The word of 
Jahveh through Moses is the form of appeal to the peo- 
ple. Polyjahvism is attacked, doctrinally, by the dec- 
laration ^'Hear, O Israel, Jahveh our God is one Jah- 
veh"; practically, by the centralization of worship at 
one sanctuary. A patriotic motive may also have been 
behind the movement toward centralization,^ because 
the existence of many sanctuaries had exerted a po- 
litically divisive influence. The doctrinal reform of 
Jahvism, however, is not carried to the point oi 
monotheism, but stops for the time being with mono- 
jahvism. 

The discovery and promulgation of Deuteronomy, 
followed by the reformation under Josiah, conferred 

» Cf. I Kings, 12:25-33. 



MONOJAHVISM OF DEUTERONOMY 217 

power and distinction upon the Jerusalem priesthood. 
The latter, assisted by other elements, appropriated 
the Deuteronomic movement for their own ends by 
heightening the divine sanction for the choice of Jeru- 
salem into a guarantee of its perpetuity. Jeremiah 
came into conflict with this inviolability party because 
he championed the ethical ideals of the prophets, to 
which Deuteronomy was intended to give practical 
enforcement. 

That Deuteronomic theology has not advanced to 
the point of absolute monotheism is proved by the 
crass particularism of supplementary parts of Deu- 
teronomy, like the fourth chapter. The introduction 
of the Assyrian astral religion, together with the hous- 
ing of its symbols, altars, and ministers in the temple 
of Jerusalem, furnishes occasion for the subjection of 
rival deities to Jahveh. Their existence, therefore, re- 
mains unchallenged. The view is propounded that 
Jahveh has allotted these gods to be worshipped by 
foreign nations, and has elected the Israelites for his 
own service. 

Jeremiah is the first to move in the direction of theo- 
retical monotheism by declaring these subordinate 
deities * * no-gods ' ' and ' ' nonentities. " But the particu- 
larism of Deuteronomy is increasingly and mischiev- 
ously exploited in the priestly literature of later Old 
Testament times. It may in part be charged to this 
particularism that polytheistic ideas and expressions 
survive to a comparatively late period. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE SOCIAL ETHICS OF DEUTERONOMY 
I 

Certain fundamental aspects of the Deuteronomic 
ideas of God, discussed in the preceding chapter, have 
prepared us to consider the testimony of Deuteronomic 
legislation to the growth of Israel's moral ideals. Deu- 
teronomy, as it stands, does not attempt to regulate 
with its precepts the entire life of the people. It takes 
for granted the existence of an established system of 
judicature, of ritual, and of social customs and institu- 
tions. There doubtless was much in this established 
order of things which, under the Deuteronomic view of 
divine requirements, could be either ignored or tacitly 
approved. With such matters the book does not con- 
cern itself. It selects for treatment those parts of the 
religious and social system which are to be changed. 
Some of the more fundamental of these changes, made 
necessary by the law of the central sanctuary, have 
already been discussed. We may reasonably assume, 
too, that the codifiers of Deuteronomy restated with 
special emphasis some old regulations which under the 
new order had moved from a secondary place to one of 
primary importance. 

In this view of Deuteronomy, its protests and legis- 
lative changes, no less than its emphases, acquire 



ETHICS OF DEUTERONOMY 219 

special ethical significance. Our information, it must 
be confessed, would be more complete if we knew more 
precisely the nature of the idolatrous practices which 
are condemned, and the exact character of that pre- 
Deuteronomic form of popular religion which is to be 
changed in faith and in practice. Taken as a whole, 
then, the legislation of Deuteronomy expresses a degree 
of intention, or deliberation, which makes it a pecu- 
liarly reliable witness to the religious faith and social 
ethics of the seventh century B.C. Being set forth ex- 
plicitly as an expression of the will and nature of Jahveh 
we possess in Deuteronomy an excellent means of de- 
termining the extent to which the Deuteronomists had 
moralized their idea of God. For the character of Jah- 
veh cannot be dissociated from the character of a law 
which is claimed to be his utterance. 

Inasmuch as in the social ethics of Deuteronomy we 
are supposed to possess, in the main, the moral teach- 
ings of the prophets reduced to a practical system, we 
are bound to ask whether the ethical defects of Deu- 
teronomy are to be regarded as having been inherent 
also in the teaching of the prophets from Amos to Zeph- 
aniah. The practical rejection by the prophets of that 
cultus which in Deuteronomy is deemed of sufficient 
value to be reformed and regulated, and the hostile 
attitude assumed by Jeremiah toward those who seem 
to have urged the finality and sufficiency of the new 
law,^ warn us against a hasty identification of pro* 

» Jer.8:8,9. 



220 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

phetic and Deuteronomic religion. But, in most mat- 
ters pertaining to social institutions and the regula- 
tion of the individual's duty as a member of society, 
the pre-exilic prophets, with the possible exception of 
Jeremiah, appear not to require more than is set forth 
in Deuteronomy. This consideration should serve as 
a check to one who feels tempted to read into the 
silences and the general statements of the prophets a 
higher standard of civic or personal morality than is 
found in Deuteronomy. Generally speaking, the moral 
limitations of the one were doubtless those of the other. 
But the most valuable prophetic element in Deuteron- 
omy IS its forward look, its moral aspiration. The work 
and faith of the prophets are to be sought in its spirit, 
which might have proved capable of bringing ever en- 
larging areas of the people's moral endeavor under its 
sway. But Deuteronomy, as we shall show in the 
chapter on Jeremiah, fell at once into the hands of those 
who killed the spirit with the letter. 

Inquiry into the status of those human rights which 
we now consider universal and inalienable shows that 
Deuteronomy, like the earlier codes, has no conscience 
regarding the institution of slavery. Its right to exist 
and continue is taken for granted as placidly as the 
existence of the cultus. To one familiar with Hebrew 
institutions such a statement must seem superfluous, 
since the Old Testament never reaches a point where 
it condemns slavery in itself. But the average reader 
of Deuteronomy needs to be reminded of the fact, in 



ETHICS OF DEUTERONOMY 221 

order that he may make a just ethical appraisal ot 
Deuteronomic social ethics. Whether slavery in Israel 
was of a mild or severe form need not concern us here. 
It doubtless was prevailingly mild. That circumstance, 
however, should not be urged in excuse of an institu- 
tion which remains at its best a social crime. The pages 
of some of the earlier apologists for Old Testament 
ethics might lead one to suppose that men went about 
looking for positions as Hebrew slaves. It is sufficient 
to know that the Hebrews themselves regarded slavery, 
at least in a foreign land, as one of the worst calamities 
that could befall them.^ 

Deuteronomy provides that a Hebrew slave, who 
escapes to Palestine from his foreign master, shall not 
be restored to his owner,^ and a Hebrew who kidnaps 
one of his fellow-countrymen and sells him into slavery 
is to be punished with death. ^ One may observe in 
these and other Deuteronomic regulations in regard to 
slavery an accentuation of the tendency to heighten 
the claims of humanity in the case of Hebrews only. 
They were believed to be entitled to treatment quite 
different from that accorded to a foreigner. A late 
supplemental addition to the Priests' Code prohibits 

1 Dt. 28:32; cf. 15:15, and Ex. 21:16. 

2 Dt. 23: 15, 16. Vs. 16 indicates that an Israelite slave is meant. But 
it may have applied to all slaves escaped from foreigners. If so, I Kings, 
2:39^., where Shimei goes to Philistine territory to recover his escaped 
slaves, shows that Hebrew slaveholders did not expect the same treat- 
ment from their foreign neighbors. It may be safely asserted that this 
regulation was not enforced in regard to runaway slaves among the 
Hebrews. Cf. sees. 16-20 of the Hammurabi Code. 

3 Dt. 24:7. Cf. Gen. 37:27 where Joseph's brother Judah proposes 
to sell him into slavery among foreigners. 



222 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

the enslavement of Hebrews, but permits the chosen 
nation to supply its need of slaves by purchase from 
"the nations that are round about," or from among 
the descendants of resident aliens, or clients. Such 
slaves were not subject to release and could be kept in 
bondage forever.^ 

But Deuteronomy still assumes the presence, in 
Judah, of Hebrew slaves, who have sold themselves by 
reason of poverty, or have been sold into bondage by 
their parents. It greatly ameliorates the condition of 
these slaves by providing for their liberation, women 
as well as men, at the end of six years. ^ Since freedom 
without means of subsistence would in those times 
have been a fatal boon, involving immediate relapse 
into servitude, the Hebrew master is directed not to let 
a slave go empty-handed, but to supply him liberally 
from his store. There are weighty reasons for think- 
ing that this law never passed into practice, for after 
a reluctant release of slaves by citizens of Jersualem 
under the pressure of a siege during the time of Jere- 
miah, they were caught and put into bondage again as 
soon as the crisis appeared to have passed.^ But even 
unrealized religious ideals of benevolence have their 
value, for they keep alive a feeling of dissatisfaction 
with the average of current morality, 

\ 

* Lev. 25:44-46. 

2 Dt. 15:12-18. The earlier law decided against the liberation of 
women ; cf. Ex. 21:7. 

' Jer. 34 : 8-16. Slavery here appears as anything but a semi-benevolent 
institution. 



ETHICS OF DEUTERONOMY 223 

A late priestly writer ^ considerably reduced the 
ideality of the law by making the end of the forty- 
ninth year of servitude one of release for all slaves of 
Hebrew race, instead of the end of the sixth for each 
Hebrew-born slave. As far as one can see, this, also, 
remained a mere paper law, and it was meaningless in 
any case if the regulation against the enslavement of 
Hebrews by their fellow-countrymen was observed. 
If, on the other hand, it was made applicable to He- 
brews held in bondage by foreigners in post-exilic 
times, the law providing for the redemption ^ of such 
slaves by their fellow-countrymen was unnecessary. 

It is to be noted, further, that Deuteronomy pro- 
vides for the voluntary choice of permanent slavery ^ 
in those cases where a slave does not wish to leave his 
master. That there were such, speaks well for some 
Hebrew masters, but it is also an eloquent comment 
upon the precariousness of existence in those days. Nor 
must one overlook the fact that there was a fly in 
the ointment of this humanitarianism. An unmarried 
slave frequently was given a wife of foreign origin by 
his master. Neither such a wife nor her children were 
subject to release and had to be abandoned by the 
slave who elected to be free.* Under these circum- 
stances it is conceivable that other emotions than those 
of contentment with his lot may have led him to prefer 
permanent servitude. 

Slavery being an integral and legally recognized 

1 Lev. 25:10 2 Lev. 25:47/. ^Dt. jg^ig^. ^ Ex. 21:2-6. 



224 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

institution of Hebrew society, it is not surprising to 
find that from the time of Solomon onward a class 
of foreign slaves, Nethinim^ was employed to do the 
menial services in the temple at Jerusalem.^ The same 
practice, doubtless, prevailed at other sanctuaries. 
These temple slaves continued in service after the Deu- 
teronomic reformation. They were prevailingly of 
foreign origin and not subject to release. A Deutero- 
nomic editor of the Book of Joshua placed his approval 
upon Joshua's enslavement of the Gibeonites in the 
words, "Cursed be ye, and for all future time shall ye 
be slaves for the house of my God." ^ 

We find, therefore, that Deuteronomy countenances 
slavery in the name of Jahveh, much as the ear- 
lier codes do, but attempts to mitigate some of its 
abuses in practice. It is conceivable that the need 
of more definite regulations to secure humanitarian 
treatment arose out of the changing conditions of 
slavery. In a nomadic or half-nomadic society, gov- 
erned by patriarchal custom, the lot of the slave is not 
a hard one. The necessities of an agricultural and urban 
life make more severe demands, and greatly increase 
the hardships of slavery. This fact has been overlooked 
by many writers who have generalized on slavery as 
practised among the Israelites by means of illustra- 
tions derived from the earlier period. 

The mitigations of severity applied almost exclu- 

1 Josh. 9:3-27; Ezek. 44:6/.; Ezra 2:55/.; 8:20. 

2 Josh. 9: 23. " Hewers of wood and drawers of water" is a late gloss, 
both in this verse and in vs. 27. 



ETHICS OF DEUTERONOMY 225 

sively to Israelitish slaves, who fell into their condition 
through debt, and who probably never formed a large 
proportion of the slave population. The great ma- 
jority were of alien origin and these received little con- 
sideration at the hands of the Deuteronomists. Ben- 
zinger is quite within the historical facts when he 
says; **The liberation of a slave of alien race seems 
rarely to have occurred; no instance of it is recorded 
anywhere, and the old regulations regarding release 
applied only to slaves of Israelitish race." ^ This con- 
tinuing disposition to restrict within racial limits the 
range of moral obligation both among freedmen and 
among slaves, is an important datum in a study of this 
stage of Hebrew moral development. 

It is, however, to be noted as a real ethical gain that 
Deuteronomic religion sanctions the higher moral 
aspirations and needs of an advancing society, even 
though it confines their exercise to the national circle 
of blood-kinship. Within the families and clans, at 
first, are bred the altruistic virtues whose sphere of 
exercise is later enlarged to include the tribe, and ulti- 
mately the nation. The next step must be the exten- 
sion of intertribal morality beyond the boundaries of 
the nation. Evidence looking toward the emergence 
of an international standard of morality has already 
been furnished by Amos. But a definite basis for it, 
in the thought of a God who is more than a national 
deity and does not confine his interest to Hebrews, is 
* ArchcBologie (1907), p. 124. 



226 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

provided for the first time by Jeremiah. Deuteronomy 
still is narrowly particularistic. 

This particularism shows itself most strongly in the 
treatment accorded to the ger and the foreigner. The 
former corresponds to the Arabian jar^^ a kind of resi- 
dent alien. In the English versions of the Bible the 
Hebrew term is translated *' stranger" and "so- 
journer," but since a technical meaning attaches to 
the word we shall render it more exactly if we speak 
of a client. Men outlawed from their own tribes for 
murder, incest, or other reasons, or who came as 
traders, or fugitive debtors, customarily sought the 
protection of another tribe or nation. Occasionally an 
entire group was taken into dependent alliance with 
a stronger tribe or nation. Such a relationship con- 
ferred upon clients the right of settlement among their 
protectors, and obligated the latter to exact blood- 
revenge for any outrage committed against them. It 
substantially amounted to an agreement on the part of 
patrons to make the clients' quarrel their own. This, 
of course, relates chiefly to injuries to which the client 
might be subjected from without the group into which 
he has been taken. His status within the same was 
another matter. 

Inasmuch as the Hammurabi Code, ages before the 
promulgation of Deuteronomy, had wiped out the 

1 Cf. W. R. Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia (ed. 
1903), p. 49/., for an excellent account of the clients, or protected stran- 
gers; German, SchutzbHrger, or Beisasse; Greek, Xenoi. Among the He- 
brews, as elsewhere, the pure-blooded tribesman, or ezrah, was clearly 
distinguished from the gtr, the slave ('ebed), and the foreigner {nokhri). 



ETHICS OF DEUTERONOMY 227 

distinction before the law between natives and for- 
eigners, we must regard the retention of such distinc- 
tions in the Hebrew code, as evidence of a society less 
advanced in culture. The gefy or client, did enjoy a 
large measure of protection, but he is distinctly a per- 
son of the second class before the law. This appears 
clearly in one of the food taboos,^ and in the repeated 
recommendation of charity for the client, along with 
widows and orphans, who probably could sue only 
through a patron. Like the country priests whom the 
Deuteronomic law of centralization deprived of their 
living, he is treated as a ward of the community and 
admitted to a share in a sort of voluntary poor-rate 
instituted by Deuteronomy. ^ Reiterated warnings 
against perverting the justice due to the client are also 
to be regarded as significant.^ The right of intermar- 
riage was denied to him,^ and while he had to accom- 
modate himself to a few external observances of 
Israel's religion and was admitted as a dependent to 
the sacrificial feasts, he was not counted a full member 
of the religious community by the Deuteronomist. 
Food denied to an Israelite on the ground of its ritual 
uncleanness, and commanded to be thrown to the dogs 
in the legislation of the E document, may on the au- 
thority of Jahveh be given to the client, for the in- 
terest of Israel's God is limited strictly to Israelites. 
*' Ye shall not eat anything that dieth of itself," reads 

1 Dt. 14:21 ; cf. 10:18 ; 14:29; 24:14, igff. 

2 Dt. 26:11, 12. 3 Dt. 24:17 ; 27:19. 

* Dt. 7:1 #.; 23:3. 



228 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

the passage; "thou may est give it to the client that is 
within thy gates, that he may eat it; or thou mayest 
sell it to a foreigner: for thou art an holy people to 
Jahveh, thy God." ^ The Israelite, being the particular 
object of the deity's regard, is bound by rigid blood 
taboos, which he must carefully observe in order to re- 
main acceptable to Jahveh. 

Elsewhere Deuteronomy characterizes Jahveh as 
a great God who shows no partiality and takes no 
bribe; who secures justice to the orphan and the 
widow, and who loves the client in that he provides 
him with food and raiment. ^ Comparison of these two 
passages illustrates the danger of reading into parts of 
the Old Testament a degree of morality quite beyond 
their intention. In the thought of the Deuteronomist, 
Jahveh's impartiality apparently suffers no impair- 
ment by the utterance of laws which make justice 
obligatory between native tribesmen, but dismiss the 
client with a recommendation of charity. And what 
significance can attach to his assertion of Jahveh's love 
for the client, when the latter is excluded from full 
membership in the religious community, and may on 
Jahveh's authority be given for food the carcass of an 
animal that has succumbed to disease? This permis- 
sion hardly contemplates anything else than a bargain 
made with deliberate intention to deceive. The Israel- 
ites' Semitic neighbors undoubtedly had the same 
superstitious abhorrence for meat of that kind, and 

1 Dt. 14:21; cf. Ex. 22:31. Observe that "holy" has only a ritual, no 
moral, significance here. See pp. 176-7. ^ Dt. 10:17, 18. 



ETHICS OF DEUTERONOMY 229 

would not be induced, without deception, to take it. 
It was on the same principle that the Israelites, on the 
eve of departure from Egypt, were directed to borrow 
from the Egyptians, with the concealed intention of 
keeping what they were able to get. Thus Jacob, de- 
ceiving his blind old father, filched the blessing from 
Esau, who represented the Edomites, Jahveh being 
assumed as the silent partner in the transaction, inas- 
much as he does not withhold the blessing. In such 
cases, despite falsehood and deception, Jahveh es- 
pouses the cause of the Israelite against the foreigner. 
The above considerations warn us that we are in 
Deuteronomy still dealing with a rather narrow 
group morality invested with divine sanctions. 

Twenty years after Deuteronomy had been en- 
forced among the people by royal edict, Jeremiah 
comes into open conflict with those who claim to be 
the official representatives of Deuteronomic religion. 
His great temple address opens with the warning plea: 
** Amend your ways and your doings!" And promi- 
nent among the ''doings'* which he mentions as re- 
quiring amendment is that of the oppression of the 
client {g^r)^ Since Deuteronomy does not mention 
definite legal rights of the client, is there a difference 
of opinion between Jeremiah and the custodians of the 
law-book as to what constitutes the considerate treat- 
ment prescribed for the resident alien, or is he appeal- 
ing to an unwritten prophetic standard of ethics which 

» Jer. 7:6. 



230 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

goes beyond Deuteronomy? In view of his denuncia- 
tion of the ** lying pen of the scribes," ^ one must allow 
the possibility of the latter. We should like to think 
that he disapproves also of the Deuteronomic regula- 
tions that deal with the out-and-out alien, the nokhri,^ 
for in them clan morality finds especially crass expres- 
sion. Since Jeremiah does flatly deny divine sanction 
in the case of the cultus, it seems not improbable that 
he may have denied the alleged divine sanctions of 
other backward customs also. 

Mere group morality underlies also the Deutero- 
nomic provision that Hebrew creditors shall cancel the 
obligations of their Hebrew debtors at the end of every 
seven years. But ''of a foreigner," says the Deuter- 
onomic legislator, **thou mayest exact it," i.e., the 
debt.' Disregarding for a moment the distinction made 
between natives and foreigners in the judicial regula- 
tion of their affairs, it is pertinent to observe that the 
Deuteronomist appears to know nothing of a mercan- 
tile credit system, nor of wealth employed as a capi- 
tal for investment, — commercial utilities with which 
Babylonia had long been familiar. His regulations pre- 
suppose a population of agriculturists and herdsmen, 

ijer.8:8,9. 

2 Steuernagel, Einleitung (1912), p. 199, regards as later additions the 
few passages that define Israel's relation to the nokhri; Dt. 14:21a; 
15 • 3; 17* 15b; 23 : 20a. The reasons do not seem decisive to the present 
writer. Even if they were eliminated as post-exilic, the specification of a 
"brother" and "neighbor" as the one who is to benefit by the release 
and no-interest ordinances, still implies the same discrimination against 
the foreigner. 

» Dt. 15: 1-3. 



ETHICS OF DEUTERONOMY 231 

who in the matter of their necessities are not far above 
the plane of nomadism. Hence he assumes that debt 
is incurred only under stress of poverty, and his regu- 
lations are designed to protect the poor man against 
the rapacity of ancient loan sharks.^ Considering that 
the borrowing probably related nearly always to the 
satisfaction of immediate necessities, it was a humane 
provision to prohibit the taking of interest, a provision 
from the benefits of which the foreigner, however, is 
again expressly excluded. ^ 

In the light of these facts it will be clear that this 
prohibition relates to a practice which has next to 
nothing in common with what we now understand by 
legal interest paid upon loans. It relates to exces- 
sively usurious exactions commonly made by creditors 
in ancient times. Old Babylonian contracts stipulate 
interest at thirty-three and one third and forty per 
cent.. In Neo-Babylonian times it usually was fixed 
at twenty per cent.^ This loan system was a fruitful 
means of recruiting the supply of slaves, for both the 
debtor and his family could be sold into slavery for 
non-payment.^ 

Therefore, the exemption of Israelites from the 

• Is. 5:8;Micah2:2, 9;3:i-3. 

2 Dt. 23: 19, 20. The old law of E (Ex. 22:25) reads, "If thou lend 
money to any of my people with thee that is poor, thou shalt not be to 
him as a [money] lender (nosheh)." A glossator, leaning on Deuteronomy, 
added "Ye shall not lay upon him interest" (neshekh), thus indicating 
that the taking of interest always meant exorbitant interest. Two pas- 
sages in Ezekiel corroborate this view: Ezek. 18: 17; 22: 12. 

• Cf. Meissner, Beitraege zum altbahylonischen Privatrecht, 10, 23. 

• II Kings 4:1; Is. 50:1. 



232 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

requirement of interest upon loans, and their release 
from debtor's bondage at the end of a certain period, 
are not to be regarded as charitable concessions be- 
yond the demands of justice, from which it would 
be no special grievance to be excluded. On the con- 
trary, they were nothing less than checks upon out- 
rage, mitigations of injustice, from which a large part 
of the population was excluded. How little the justice 
of the system was questioned in early times may be 
seen by a legend told about Elisha.^ A creditor is 
about to wrest from a prophet's widow her two sons 
to be sold into slavery for a trifling debt. Elisha then 
works a curious miracle to pay the creditor, who was 
a felon from our ethical point of view, and who even 
by the humanitarian standards of Deuteronomy, had 
it been in existence, was an oppressor of the widow 
and the orphan. Such a miracle as this would have 
to be rejected on moral grounds, if on no other. 

We have no reason to think that the client, so fre- 
quently mentioned as entitled equally with widows 
and orphans to considerate treatment, fared any 
better than they. His prosperity was watched with 
jealous eyes, and his possible rise to a degree of affluence 
in which he might lend to an Israelite instead of bor- 
rowing from him was regarded as so disastrous a re- 
versal of the normal relationship that the Deuteron- 
omist includes it among the fearful consequences 
of disobedience that shall overtake the nation if it 
1 II Kings 4: 1-7. 



ETHICS OF DEUTERONOMY 233 

fails to observe the Deuteronomic law. ''The client 
that is in the midst of thee shall mount up above thee 
higher and higher; and thou shalt come down lower 
and lower. He shall lend to thee, and thou shalt not 
lend to him: he shall be the head and thou shalt be the 
tail." * Evidently a no-interest agreement forms no 
part of the supposed transaction. This case, in which 
a reversal of fortune is imagined, shows that the 
normal status of the client was one of economic in- 
feriority. 

In this respect the client apparently is on the same 
legal footing as the foreigner. If the latter contracts 
a debt, the exorbitant interest charge of the creditor 
is binding upon him. Though he has paid it three 
times over in the payment of interest, there is for him 
no seventh-year release, as for his Israelite neighbor. 
And if he and his children are sold into slavery by the 
creditor, there is for him no release from bondage until 
he goes "where the wicked cease from troubling . . . 
and the slave is free from his master.** ^ 

One may properly enquire whether this discrimina- 
tion against the foreigner was ever more than a paper 
law, like the Deuteronomic command to exterminate 
the Canaanites, uttered at a time when as a people 
they were no longer in existence. It is impossible now 
to ascertain the exact facts. But in all likelihood a 
good many aliens had found their way into Judah 
from northern Israel, which the Assyrians had colo- 
» Dt. 28:43, 44. * Job. 3: 17-19. 



234 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

nized largely with settlers brought from the East. 
However that may be, the ethical status of Deuteron- 
ony must, in any case, be determined by the express 
tenor of its laws, not by the accidents of their observ- 
ance. And if it is true that unrealized aspirations of 
benevolence on behalf of Israelites remained in the 
book as a permanent urge toward a higher intertribal 
social morality, it is equally true that the written em- 
bodiment of its legalized injustice toward those of alien 
race remained to cast its evil influence far down the 
centuries. The increasingly fanatical insistence upon 
purity of race as a correlate to purity of religion, which 
characterized post-exilic Judaism, received its initial 
impulse from Deuteronomy. In modern times, during 
the long struggle for the abolition of slavery, defenders 
of this inhuman institution drew many an argument 
from the anti-alien regulations of Deuteronomy to 
prove that God himself had ordained distinctions in 
denial of the doctrine that all men are created free 
and equal. 

Let us suppose that Deuteronomy's racial and re- 
ligious exclusivism was the by-product of a justifiable 
reaction, the work of men who were thinking back on 
old mistakes. The friendly absorption of large masses 
of the native Palestinian population by the incoming 
Israelites was held responsible for the corruptions 
of religion. The remedy which the Deuteronomists 
declare God prescribes is not the moral discipline 
of the Israelite, but the massacre of the Canaanite. 



ETHICS OF DEUTERONOMY 235 

"Thou shalt consume all the people that Jahveh 
thy God shall deliver unto thee; thine eyes shall not 
pity them." ^ " Of the cities of these [Canaanite] peoples 
thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth; but 
thou shalt utterly destroy them . . . that they teach 
you not to do after all their abominations." ''Neither 
shalt thou make marriages with them ... for they 
will turn away thy son from following me." ^ in order 
that the darling boy of the household may not be en- 
snared by the wiles of your neighbor's daughter, go 
and burn down your neighbor's house, and let none 
of his household escape. That, reduced to tangible 
form, seems to be the ethical principle involved in 
such action. 

We have here the effect of the national-god-idea 
upon the sense of moral obligation toward those out- 
side of the political-racial group. Psychologically the 
Israelite restriction of God's love and interest to them- 
selves was really the reflection of their own unmoral 
attitude toward non-Israelites. A domestic God is the 
patron of a domestic morality. Hence the naive as- 
sumption that deception, oppression, and injury are 
not wrong in Jahveh's eyes if a foreigner is the victim. 
There are, of course, individual manifestations of a 
higher morality, and Jeremiah censures those who act 
the part of Jacob.^ But the general assumption is that, 

» Dt. 7:16. 

' Dt. 20:16-18; 7:3-4. According to Gen. 9:26 the Canaanite was 
destined to be the slave of the Israelite. 

3 Jer. 9:4. The Hebrew words rendered "will utterly supplant" 



236 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

beyond the pale of hospitality, no foreigner has any 
rights which an Israelite is bound to respect. 

From a historical point of view this is more or less 
justifiable as a transient condition in a developing proc- 
ess. Seen in the light of the whole course of develop- 
ment, Deuteronomy takes a noble, though subordinate, 
place in the advancing moral experience of Israel. But 
to teach its dual standard of justice, one for the Is- 
raelite and another for aliens, as the **Word of God," 
is an affront to common intelligence and unworthy 
of the Christian idea of God. 

II 

The disposition to insist upon purity of race as a con- 
dition of purity of religion exhibits some curious anoma- 
lies and inconsistencies with respect to certain aliens. 
The Israelites of the Deuteronomist*s time are com- 
manded not to ** abhor" Egyptians and Edomites.^ 
It is stated as a special concession in their case that 
their children of the third generation may become rec- 
ognized members of the Hebrew religious community. 
The reason given for favoring the Egyptians — that 
the Israelites once upon a time were clients in Egypt — 
is as inconsequential as the reason for excluding Moab- 
ites and Ammonites. It is clearly a case of reasons 
found after the fact. During the later monarchy there 

strongly suggest an allusion to Gen. 27:36. Cornill, following Erbt, 
renders "iibt Jacobstrug" — "practices Jacob's tricks." Jeremiah re- 
proves his countrymen for practising such tricks upon each other. 
1 Dt. 23: 7, 8- 



ETHICS OF DEUTERONOMY 237 

was much intercourse with Egypt, and Isaiah's earnest 
warnings against political alliance with that country 
are strong evidence of friendly feeling at the royal 
court and among the people. 

Jnthecaseof Edomites,the all-powerful bond of blood 
kinship is urged as the ground of preferential treatment. 
At the time of the destruction of Jerusalem the feeling 
toward them changed to one of deep hatred, as may be 
seen by the little prophecy of Obadiah.^ Since few 
pages of the Old Testament are more vindictive than 
those which paint the vengeance that is to be wreaked 
upon Edom, it is pleasant to possess this Deuteronomic 
record of a friendlier period. Indirectly, the case of the 
Egyptians and Edomites furnishes another means of 
gauging the anti-alien feeling of Deuteronomy. If the 
Israelite is not to abhor individuals of these particular 
nationalities, and yet their descendants may not be 
admitted to full religious standing until the third 
generation, what chance of recognition did the aver- 
age client and foreigner have? What of the morality 
of this race hatred? Was it right to abhor them as 
foreigners? 

The Deuteronomist furnishes an instructive example 
in^ the Ammonites and Moabites, whom he singles out 
for special reprobation.^ '' Even to the tenth generation 

1 Cf. Is. 34; Mai. 1:3/. 

2 Dt. 23:3-6. Bertholet (Deuteronomium, 1899, p. 71; Stellung d. 
Isr. zu d. Fremden, pp. 142-45) regards Dt. 23 : 1-8 as a post-exilic addi- 
tion. His reasons are weighty but do not seem to me decisive. But if he 
is right, Ezra's unscrupulousness is placed in a very bad light, and the 
anti-alien tendency of Deuteronomy is not greatly lessened. One might, 



238 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

shall none belonging to them enter into the assembly 
of Jahveh forever.'* Strangely enough the reason given 
for this enactment is that these tribal nationalities 
showed hostility toward the Israelites when they ''came 
forth out of Egypt." An unfriendly act committed by 
Ammonite and Moabite ancestors seven centuries be- 
fore is given as the reason for the injunction: ^'Thou 
shalt not seek their peace nor their prosperity all thy 
days forever." No single passage could make more 
strikingly apparent the contrast between Deuteron- 
omy and the teaching of Jesus, or show more conclu- 
sively how much of the spirit of the Mosaic Law he nul- 
lified and extinguished when he summed up its essence 
in man's duty to love God with all his heart, and his 
neighbor, in the sense of any human being, as himself. 
It might pertinently be pointed out that Deuteron- 
omy for the first time legalizes departure from the 
old principle of group responsibility, in providing that 
''the fathers shall not be put to death for the children, 
nor the children ... for the fathers " ; that " every man 
shall be put to death for his own sin." ^ Since the 
Deuteronomist's judgment against the Ammonites 
and Moabites is a particularly gross case of visiting 
the sins of the fathers upon the children, not merely 
to the third or fourth remove, but to endless genera- 
tions, the modern reader of the Bible becomes con- 
scious here of a direct contradiction in principle. One 

indeed, argue that Ezra caused the insertion in Deuteronomy of anti- 
alien regulations, which he then tried to enforce. 
1 Dt. 24:16. 



ETHICS OF DEUTERONOMY 239 

may offer in explanation of the fact: (i) that the Deu- 
teronomist desires to abrogate the principle of group 
responsibility only in specific cases where capital pun- 
ishment was involved; (2) that here, as in numerous 
other cases, the Deuteronomic amelioration of ancient 
practice is intended to apply only to Israelites; (3) that 
the cause of exclusion alleged in the text is an addition 
by a later hand, and that the real reason, assumed, but 
not given by the legislator, is the supposed incestuous 
origin of the Moabites and Ammonites.^ 

It undoubtedly is true that the Deuteronomists 
never carry the principle of individual responsibility 
beyond concrete cases of capital punishment in which 
Israelites are involved. They never attempt such far- 
reaching applications of the principle as are later 
made by Ezekiel, who infers that if in human courts 
the fathers cannot be justly punished for the sins of 
the children, nor the children for those of the parents, 
then God cannot justly follow such a rule in the in- 
fliction of his judgments. The old idea of communal 
liability, so far as the punishments of God are con- 
cerned, received its strongest expression in the re- 
markable twenty-eighth chapter of Deuteronomy. 
There it is never the individual, but always the 
nation that is the subject of religion, and the object 
of divine rewards and penalties. Under such a con- 
ception of theodicy it is very natural to suppose 
that when a calamity overtakes any nation, it is a 
1 Gen. 19:30/.; cf. Dt. 23:2. 



240 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

punishment for the accumulated guilt of previous 
generations.^ 

Granting that the third explanation is the most sig- 
nificant, the fact remains that the editor who fur- 
nished this later explanation still believed without 
scruple that God nurses a grudge and makes its satis- 
faction incumbent upon his votaries to endless genera- 
tions. But equally serious moral objections must be 
brought against the view which bases the exclusion of 
the Moabites and Ammonites upon their alleged incest- 
uous origin. The story told in Genesis about their 
descent from Lot is obviously etymological, a legend 
spun out of their names, and informed with the same 
race hatred that speaks in Deuteronomy. 

If the story was believed in priestly circles, prevail- 
ing ideas of the transmissibility of ritual uncleanness 
arising from an incestuous union may have led to the 
permanent exclusion of the above-mentioned nation- 
alities. This explanation seems the more plausible be- 
cause the command of exclusion is immediately pre- 
ceded by another which in the same terms bars a 
mamzer and his descendants from admission ''into the 
assembly of Jahveh." ^ The exact meaning of the word 
is uncertain, but the translation ''bastard" is inexact 
if ''Rabbinical tradition is right in supposing the 
term to denote not generally one born out of wedlock, 
but the offspring of an incestuous union, or of a mar- 
riage contracted within the prohibited degrees of af- 

1 Cf. Gen. 15:16. 2Dt. 23:2. 



ETHICS OF DEUTERONOMY 241 

finity." ^ We seem, then, to be dealing in this instance 
with a species of taboo whose moral aspect demands 
consideration. 

It scarcely is necessary to observe, even to the strict- 
est defender of Biblical traditionalism, that commands 
which increase the miseries and degradation of inno- 
cent unfortunates, can have no valid claim to emanate 
from God, whatever theory of revelation one may 
hold. The idea that a moral stain can attach to men 
out of the circumstances of their birth is a wicked 
superstition which has done the more harm in the world 
because it was provided with a divine sanction in the 
Old Testament. It is difficult to suppose that any of 
the great prophets who preceded Deuteronomy would 
have countenanced prescriptions like these, which 
encourage that invariably disastrous development 
within a religion whereby ritual purity is substituted 
for moral purity as the goal of man's striving. The 
prophets held that acceptability with God was a mat- 
ter of conduct and character, not of birth and taboos. 
This fundamental issue was at the very core of Jere- 
miah's difficulties with the defenders of Deuteronomy 
in his day. 

Closely analogous to that of the Ammonites and 
Moabites is the case of the Amalekites. The Israelites 
were charged not to forget to *'blot out the remem- 
brance of Amalek from under heaven " because of what 

1 Driver, Deuteronomy, p. 260. Cf. Lev. 18:6-20 ; 20: 10-21. Cf. 
chapter on the "Decalogue' in the present work, p. 122. 



242 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

he "did unto thee by the way as ye came forth out 
of Egypt.'* Responsibility for a treacherous act, com- 
mitted centuries before and not otherwise recorded in 
the Old Testament, was thus, under the prevailing 
ideal of tribal solidarity, fastened upon the entire na- 
tionality and regarded as furnishing justification for 
a feud of extermination to the last survivor. Probably 
this injunction was repeated here only for dramatic 
effect, since the Amalekites had long ceased to be for- 
midable neighbors of the Israelites. As Driver remarks, 
"In so far as it had been actually carried into effect, 
the Israelitish reader [of Deuteronomy] would have the 
satisfaction of feeling that it was a point on which his 
nation had not failed in responding to the duty laid 
upon it." But the national and ethical limitations of 
an idea of God and religion that could still advocate 
such barbarism as a religious "duty " must not be over- 
looked. 

Historically considered, all these cases fall under the 
notion of bequeathing a feud. Among the last things 
which in antiquity rulers enjoined upon their succes- 
sors, and fathers upon their sons, was the duty of set- 
tling accounts with hereditary or personal enemies. 
David on his death-bed specifies two men whose hoar 
heads Solomon is to " bring down to Sheol with blood.'* ^ 
It could hardly appear an inappropriate representa- 

^ I Kings 2 : 1-9. While the section is Deuteronomjc and cannot be 
used to establish the historicity of the incident narrated, it indicates 
familiarity with the idea of bequeathing pbUgations of feud and of 
friendship. 



ETHICS OF DEUTERONOMY 243 

tion, therefore, that Moses, at the behest of Jahveh, 
had left directions for the treatment of national ene- 
mies. 

The Deuteronomist included in his legislation a 
unique and curious regulation which is undeniably at 
variance with his anti-alien policy and regulations. An 
Israelite is permitted to take to wife any beautiful 
female captive taken in war, on condition, however, 
that if at any time he ceases to care for her, he must not 
sell her as a slave, but permit her to go free. Amid the 
conditions of primeval Semitic culture this undoubt- 
edly was a humane provision, whose observance is 
attested also for ancient Arabia. Since Deuteronomy 
enjoins the utter extermination of the Canaanites,^ 
and expressly prohibits intermarriage with them, we 
have here an instance in which, as Bertholet^ re- 
marks, ancient custom was stronger than the will of 
the law-giver. The month of mourning taboo imposed 
for the captive's parents, who are assumed to have 
been slain under the ban, is less a humane concession 
to her than it is a precaution for her captor. This is 

* The point made in some commentaries that the regulation refers 
to female captives taken in wars subsequent to the conquest of Palestine 
seems to the present writer artificial. The Deuteronomist is, as a matter 
of course, writing at a time when the Canaanites as such had disap- 
peared, so that as far as his intention is concerned it applies to any female 
captives taken in war: cf. Dt. 20:13, where only the males of non- 
Canaanite cities are to be massacred. It is easier to account for the dis- 
crepancy between chapters 7 and 21 by assuming that they came from 
different hands, and that the writer of chapter 21 intended to account 
for the numerous marriages with Canaanite women, known to Hebrew 
tradition. 

* D enter onomium (1899), p. 66. 



/ 



244 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

clearly seen in the shaving of the head and paring of the 
nails, wide-spread ancient cathartic rites for warding 
off dangers arising from the spirits of the dead. 

Before dismissing this matter of anti-alien Deu- 
teronomic exclusivism and vendetta, it is proper to 
indicate some of its evil consequences within the Old 
Testament period. Although the writer of the Book 
of Ruth pointed out that David's great-grandmother 
was a Moabitess, a fact which, according to Deu- 
teronomic law, would have excluded him and his de- 
scendants from ''the assembly of Jahveh," and al- 
though a prophetic reaction against this exclusivism is 
discernible in Deutero- Isaiah and the Book of Jonah, 
anti-alien feeling became more and more accentu- 
ated in priestly circles until it reached its climax under 
Ezra and Nehemiah.^ An earnest protest should be 
entered against the widespread habit, in theological 
literature, of excusing this exclusivism on the ground 
that it was necessary to preserve the identity of Juda- 
ism. This assumes that the religion of Deutero-Isaiah 
and kindred spirits did not have the vitality to survive. 
Why should the most glaring defects of a certain stage 
of religious development be treated as a necessary evil 
without which subsequent good could not have been 
achieved? Christian apologists who adopt a line of 
defence by which the survival-values of a religion are 
assumed to reside in its lower, rather than in its higher, 

1 Cf. Neh. 13: 1-3, where the Deuteronomic law is quoted and acted 
upon. Cf. also Neh. 13:23-27. 



ETHICS OF DEUTERONOMY 245 

qualities, attempt to do their fighting after the arti- 
cles of capitulation have been signed. 

Ill 

At a number of points Deuteronomy sanctions de- 
partures from earlier law and custom, thereby soften- 
ing their rudeness and placing the approval of religion 
upon the gradual conquest of civilization over bar- 
barism. A common exploit of Israeli tic as of Arabic 
warfare was the destruction of an enemy's palm groves, 
the stopping of fountains, and ruining of tilled fields. 
Elisha commanded this to be done in a campaign 
against Moab.^ But the Deuteronomist forbids such 
wanton destruction as far as fruit-trees are concerned.^ 
The motive assigned, however, is the utilitarian one 
that the Israelite may eat of them. 

There is a change in the law of seduction. The 
seducer must pay the father of the girl what was prob- 
ably the usual purchase price, fifty shekels of silver, 
and take her as his wife. He is punished by being de- 
prived of the right ever to divorce her. The legislator 
does not raise the question whether the seducer has 
one or several wives already under the current prac- 
tice of polygamy. In fact, denial of the right to di- 
vorce the woman in question would have been a hard- 
ship only in those cases in which a man did not have 
sufficient means to keep more than the customary two 
wives. While this regulation probably placed a slight 

1 Cf. II Kings, 3: 19, 25. 2 Dt. 20: 19. 



246 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

hindrance in the way of such outrages, there is no deny- 
ing of the fact that it constituted but a very sHght 
check upon what from the modern point of view was 
utter barbarism. The legislator assumes without 
scruple that divorce is something which men exercise 
as an inherent right and privilege rather than as an 
emergency measure. 

It must be remembered that women, in all the regu- 
lations affecting them, are treated as property. Even 
the exceptions prove this, for on no other assumption 
could the old prohibition have been laid upon the hus- 
band-master not to sell either wives or concubines. 
But both were inheritable property.^ The eldest son 
not infrequently tried to enter upon this part of his 
inheritance during his father's lifetime.^ Absalom pro- 
claims himself the heir and successor of his father 
David by publicly taking possession of his harem.^ 

* This was old Arabic practice also. The heir had the right to sell her 
again as a wife for a mahr paid to himself. The Koran' (4, 23) forbids men 
to " inherit women against their will " ; it also forbids them (vs. 26) to have 
their stepmothers in marriage "except what has passed"; i.e., existing 
unions of that kind are not cancelled, but from that time on, the custom 
is to be considered abrogated. For further details consult W. R. Smith, 
Kinship and Marriage {ed. 1^0^), p. 104 /. Tabari's commentarj'^ on the 
Koran contains the following illustration of the custom referred to in the 
above passages. '"In the Jahiliya, when a man's father or brother or son 
died and left a widow, the dead man's heir, if he came at once and threw 
his garment over her, had the right to marry her under the dowry {mahr) 
of [i.e., already paid by] her [deceased] lord (sahib), or to give her in mar- 
riage and take her dowry. But if she anticipated him and went off to her 
own people, then the disposal of her hand belonged to herself.' The sym- 
bolical act here spoken of is the same that we find in the Book of Ruth 
(3:9)7 where the young widow asks her husband's kinsman Boaz 'to 
spread his skirt over his handmaid,* and so claim her as his wife." (TranSi 
by W. R. S.) 

2 Gen. 35:22. 3 II Sam. 16:20-22. 



ETHICS OF DEUTERONOMY 247 

Solomon treats Adonljah's request for Abishag of 
Shunem as an attempt to supplant him upon the 
throne.^ His suspicions are aroused the more readily 
because Adonijah, as the eldest, is really entitled to the 
succession and to David's harem. 

By elevating Solomon to the kingship, David had 
done the very thing which Deuteronomy forbade in 
providing that a father, having supposedly two wives, 
shall not, ^'when he causeth his sons to inherit that 
which he hath," *' make the son of the beloved the first- 
born before the son of the hated, who is the first-born. "^ 
The ancient custom which Deuteronomy here legalizes 
still reflects the primitive belief that certain God-given 
rights and mysterious qualities are inherent in primo- 
geniture. The question may properly be raised whether 
the first-born's claim to a double share of the inheritance 
may not originally have been founded in his duty to 
maintain his father's harem and the continuity of the 
family cult. The obligation to cherish parents secured 
to the mother of the first-born a share in whatever 
material benefits might accrue to him. 

In the polygamous Israelitish household the relation 
of the eldest son to his father's wives and concubines, 
except his own mother, was that of a stepson to step- 
mothers. Deuteronomy attacks this barbarous old 
custom of marital intercourse between stepsons and 

* I Kings 2:22; cf . also, 1 1 Sam. 3:7. 

2 Dt. 21:15-17; cf. I Kings, I. Rivalries within the harem were so 
common that the feminine form of the Hebrew word for enemy (sarah) 
became the technical designation of a rival wife in several Semitic dia- 
lects. 



248 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

stepmothers by placing a taboo upon such marriages 
by inheritance.^ Sixteen centuries earher, the Ham- 
murabi Code, under domestic regulations, had pro- 
vided banishment for a son who, after the death of his 
father, was caught flagrante delicto with his stepmother. 
But among the Israelites this practice had such weight 
of ancient tradition behind it, and was so deeply rooted 
in the property rights of the time, that Ezekiel still 
complains of the occurrence of such marriages.^ In- 
cidentally it may be noted that Deuteronomy lays a 
curse upon marriage with a half-sister and with a 
mother-in-law.^ Under the first head falls the marriage 
of Abraham and Sarah which the early documents re- 
garded as unobjectionable.^ 

While distinctly in the interest of a higher sex moral- 
ity, the abolition of marriage between stepsons and 
stepmothers must have simultaneously deprived the 
latter of that maintenance which as wives by inheri- 
tance they had reason to expect from the former. This 
would be an instance in which the progress of civiliza- 
tion removed from woman the relative advantages of 
a dependent condition without compensatory better- 
ment of her legal status. There is such a thing as be- 
coming the victim of an advance in morality. The 
widows, deprived of marital rights, became dependent 
upon the generosity of their husbands' heirs. In a 
Semitic oriental environment, where a woman's life was 

1 Dt. 22:30; 27:20. 2 Ezek. 22:10. 3 Dt. 27:22, 23. 

* Gen. 12:13 (J); 20:12 (E);cf. II Sam. 13:13. 



ETHICS OF DEUTERONOMY 249 

an unenviable one at best, charity was a precarious 
resource. When the hope of remarriage, or of return 
to her father's family was gone, the widow's lot was 
pitiable indeed. The Deuteronomist was quite aware 
of this fact and his sympathy for her finds expression 
in appeals, on her behalf, to the fear of God's justice,^ 
and in the curse which is to light upon her oppressor.^ 
Her raiment is not to be taken in pledge,^ the gleanings 
of the grain-fields, olive-yards, and vineyards are to be 
hers, and she is to be freely invited to share in the sac- 
rificial feasts.^ The status of fatherless children was 
practically identical with that of widows; they are al- 
most always mentioned together. 

It will at once occur to a student of these conditions 
that the case of widows and orphans called for remedial 
legislation, not recommendations to charity. Isaiah 
and Micah had championed their cause with the ut- 
most vigor.^ But neither their denunciations nor their 
pleas seem to have been of any avail. Jeremiah's 
temple address shows that the humane recommenda- 
tions of Deuteronomy apparently were being flouted 
by the very ones who sought to justify themselves by 
appealing to the Deuteronomic law.® 

The force of age-long social custom may be seen in 
this otherwise remarkable fact that the Deuterono- 
mist, who did not hesitate to make radical changes in 
the cultus, did not venture to give widows the right of 

1 Dt. 10:18. 2 Dt. 27:19. 3 Dt. 24:17. 

* Dt. 26:12, 13; 16:11, 14; 14:29. 

^ Is. 1:17; 10:2; Micah 2:9. » Jer. 7:6; cf. 8:8, 9. 



250 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

inheritance, or even a definite legal claim upon the 
property of their husbands. Interesting light is thrown 
upon the status of the Hebrew widow by reference to 
the customs of the ancient Arabs. Among them, also, 
the widow of the deceased was, as wife, a part of her 
husband's estate, and therefore was deemed incapable 
of inheriting or holding property. When Mohammed 
introduced the new rule which gave a share of inheri- 
tance to a sister or daughter, the men of Medina pro- 
tested on the ground that none should inherit save 
warriors. W. Robertson Smith further cites the story 
of Cais ibn Al-Khatim to show how impossible it was 
for women to hold property among the Medina Arabs. 
When Cais goes out to avenge his father's death, he 
provides for his mother, in the event of his own death, 
by giving a palm-garden to one of his kinsmen on con- 
dition that he is to ** nourish this old woman from it 
all her life." ^ These instances show the sort of cus- 
toms on which Deuteronomic legislators may have 
relied in contenting themselves with recommendations 
of charity on behalf of widows and orphans. Later 
Judaism at last gave widows some legal claim upon the 
property of their deceased husbands. In the more ad- 
vanced society of Babylonia this had been done two 
thousand years earlier, as shown by the Code of Ham- 
murabi. 

If the penalties of criminal law have in all ages and 

* For these and other data consult W. R. Smith, Kinship and Mar- 
riage, p. 117. Mohammed's rule providing inheritance for women is 
found in the Koran, Sura 4: 126. 



ETHICS OF DEUTERONOMY 251 

among all peoples, as Westermarck maintains, sub- 
stantially expressed the amount of public indignation 
aroused by an act, we may employ the judicial sen- 
tences imposed by the Deuteronomist, also, to obtain a 
deeper insight into the quality of his social ethics. Be- 
sides the case of a man who kidnaps a Hebrew for the 
purpose of selling him into slavery, Deuteronomy im- 
poses the death penalty in five instances. A man 
caught in adultery with a married woman is to be put 
to death with her. The same penalty is imposed if the 
woman was a virgin betrothed, one for whom the pur- 
chase money had already been paid. If the offence was 
committed in the city, both were to be executed ; but if 
it occurred in the country, the man only, on the as- 
sumption that he had used force. Misconduct with a 
concubine was not a serious offence. 

Murder of Hebrews continued to be punishable with 
death; but the killing of slaves was not considered 
murder. Since the Deuteronomist does not specify 
any modification of the earlier law it is to be assumed 
that it continued in force. If the master killed his own 
slave he was considered sufficiently punished by the 
property loss, and if he killed the slave of another he 
merely paid an indemnity of thirty shekels, which was 
probably the average purchase price of a slave. In the 
case of freemen, however, the Deuteronomist distin- 
guishes at some length between intentional and unin- 
tentional murder.^ In the latter case the offender was 

1 Dt. 19:4-10. 



252 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

to find refuge from the blood avenger in one of certain 
specified cities. That the legislator still recognizes 
the right of private revenge is striking evidence of the 
looseness of the staters judicial control and of the 
primitive manner in which justice was administered 
in murder cases. It amounts to a conditional sanction 
of murder. 

The strong social emphasis which was laid upon 
obedience to parental authority finds expression in the 
imposition of the death penalty upon an intractable 
son. The accusation had to be made by the parents 
before the natural sheiks, or elders, of the city, and the 
execution by stoning was to be carried out by *' all the 
men of his city." ^ ' 

Quite characteristic of priestly tendencies in Deu- 
teronomy is the pronouncement of a sentence of death 
upon "the man that doeth presumptuously in not 
hearkening unto the priest that standeth to minister 
there [in Jerusalem] before Jahveh thy God.*' ^ This 
mode of enforcing priestly decisions certainly was not 
prompted by any sense of public indignation. It is 
sacerdotal in origin and springs from the disposition 
to concentrate civil and religious authority within the 
Jerusalemite priesthood. We are here at the origin of 
that priestly despotism which began to assert itself 
against Jeremiah and proved so fateful to th^ later 
religion of Judaism. 

Finally, Deuteronomy imposes the death penalty 
1 Dt. 21:18-21. ' Dt. 17:12. 



ETHICS OF DEUTERONOMY 253 

upon Israelites for idolatry,^ a fact which affords evi- 
dence of the intensity of the nationalistic reaction 
within priestly-prophetical circles against foreign cults. 
The mere solicitation to idolatry, though it comes from 
brother, son, daughter, wife, or dearest friend, is to be 
instantly and ruthlessly resented with death. ^ Not 
only are individuals caught in the act of worshipping 
other gods to be put to death upon the testimony of 
two or three witnesses, but the inhabitants of entire 
Israelite cities that have lapsed into idolatry are to be 
massacred until not a man, woman, child, or animal 
remains.^ In other words, they are to be placed under 
a religious ban of complete destruction. The massacre 
completed, says the legislator, "thou shalt burn the 
city and all its spoil as a whole-offering to Jahveh." 
This atrocious barbarity was to the Deuteronomist a 
solemn religious duty whose performance, he hoped, 
might cause Jahveh to ''turn from the fierceness of his 
anger." The act of providing this extreme fanaticism 
with a legal basis by the incorporation of these manda- 
tory ordinances into the civil-religious law-book of the 
realm became productive of serious ethical conse- 
quences to the religion of Israel. The earlier code had 
provided death penalties for witchcraft and for the act 
of sacrificing to another god.^ But it probably never 
was more than a priestly torah. Now the savage zeal 
of an Elijah or Jehu in dealing with Tyrian Baalism is 

1 Dt. 17:2-7. 2 Dt. 13:6-11. 

^ Dt. 13: 12-18. * Ex. 22: 18, 20. 



254 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

made obligatory by state law in dealing with all forms 
of idolatry. 

The very possession of such laws, whether enacted 
for practical or merely dramatic purposes, was a serious 
handicap to Israel's higher moral development. The 
thought of Jahveh's love for his people and the require- 
ment of such vindictive appeasement of his anger, 
supposedly aroused by ceremonial acts of disloyalty, 
must have been difficult to reconcile even in those days 
of elemental passions. But the most serious aspect of 
the matter lies in the fact that it introduced and legal- 
ized a false standard for determining the gravity of 
sins. If for the idolator no less, but rather more, than 
for the murderer, death was the only befitting sentence 
in the eyes of God, then acts of ceremonial worship 
acquired in the eyes of the people an importance out 
of all proportion to the practice of social morality. 
This inference was made the more inevitable because 
the Deuteronomist included under idolatry not only 
the service of other gods, but also the worship of 
Jahveh by rites which were traced to Canaanite origin. 
As a matter of fact, they were not all characteristically 
Canaanite, any more than they were characteristically 
Hebraic. They were a part of the primitive Semitism 
from which both forms of worship arose. Neither were 
they all foul and immoral ; some, apart from their asso- 
ciations, had no moral significance at all. In post- 
Deuteronomic times all worship of Jahveh outside of 
Jerusalem was held to have been idolatrous, and the 



ETHICS OF DEUTERONOMY 255 

unanimity with which later writers ascribe the political 
misfortunes of the nation to this illegitimate worship 
at the country sanctuaries reveals the profound im- 
pression which Deuteronomy made with its conception 
of a God to whom idolatry is the worst of all sins. 

In this rating of ritual above moral values Deuteron- 
omy takes a retrograde step. The great prophets of the 
eighth century had specified justice, kindness, honesty, 
and truthfulness as Jahveh's supreme requirements, and 
their opposites were the leading objects of his resent- 
ment. With them, as with Jesus and the great major- 
ity of thoughtful religious people to-day, the output of 
religion was in a life, not in a system of ritual doctrine. 
The prophets no less than the Deuteronomists desired 
that Israel should be a holy people. But there was un- 
deniably more difference than resemblance between 
their respective conceptions of what constituted holi- 
ness. Isaiah at least had clearly lifted the idea of 
holiness into the moral sphere. To seek justice, to 
relieve the oppressed, to judge the fatherless, to plead 
for the widow — that was the way to acquire holiness! 
The Deuteronomist conditions the acquisition and 
preservation of holiness upon the observance of a large 
number of taboos relating to food, funerary rites, con- 
tact with the dead, matters of sex, and of war. Viola- 
tion of these taboos was believed to communicate a 
kind of pollution that was physically transmissible. 
It inhered in things as well as persons and was asso- 
ciated with magical powers and demonic influences. 



256 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

How utterly physical and concrete the Deuterono- 
mist's idea of holiness, and Jahveh's relation to it, was, 
may be gathered from his prescriptions for preserving 
the ritual purity of a military camp. *' For Jahveh thy 
God," he says, "walketh in the midst of thy camp, to 
deliver thee, and to give up thine enemies before thee; 
therefore shall thy camp be holy, that he may not see 
anything ritually objectionable in thee and turn away 
from thee." ^ 

The important point in this analysis is that Deuter- 
onomy reintroduces an inextricable mixture of ethics 
and magic, of spiritual and physical, into the notion of 
holiness. The interests of the priest begin to over- 
whelm those of the prophet. That is why Deuteron- 
omy regards idolatry and everything connected with 
alien rites and customs as a physical rather than a 
spiritual offence to the deity. They are sources of 
material contagion to land and people, which must be 
checked by fire and death. 

To the Deuteronomist all foreign peoples were idola- 
tors, — an erroneous assumption. The evil conse- 
quences of idolatry, he believed, sprang from its pol- 
luting qualities, an idea which no longer exists for us, 
except in the realm of superstition. That there could 
be anything good in another religion, or God be wor- 
shipped without a name, or under any other name than 
Jahveh, would, with his understanding of the character 
of heathenism, have been inconceivable. To him such 
* Dt. 23:9-14. 



ETHICS OF DEUTERONOMY 257 

ideas and worship were idolatrous. This view is at the 
opposite pole from the one expressed by Paul in his 
address at Athens, that mankind is a unity under God, 
and that all the various religions of the world consti- 
tute a manifold but real search after Him. Though 
the Deuteronomist sets forth Jahveh^s supremacy over 
the whole earth, it does not occur to him that other 
nations have a claim upon Jahveh's care, or that a duty 
devolves upon Jahveh's people to spread his knowledge 
beyond the borders of Israel. This idea had to await 
the coming of the Great Unknown who commonly 
passes under the name of Deutero- Isaiah. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE FIRST GREAT HERETIC 

Jeremiah of Anaihoth 

It is with satisfaction that one turns from Deuteron- 
omy to Jeremiah, who takes more advanced ground, 
both explicitly and implicitly. Unlike his contempo- 
rary Ezekiel he was not a member of the Jerusalem 
priesthood, but hailed from Anathoth, a little com- 
munity of priests situated five miles northeast of 
Jerusalem in the tribal territory of Benjamin. Thither 
Solomon had banished Abiathar, the last survivor of 
the once famous priesthood of Shiloh. Since it is 
through Jeremiah alone that we learn of the destruc- 
tion of the sanctuary and community of Shiloh by 
some undescribed awful calamity, a romantic interest 
attaches to the possibility that he may have been a 
descendant of Abiathar. 

If there was a shrine at Anathoth it must have 
suffered the same fate of abolition as all others at the 
time of Josiah's reformation, and Jeremiah's family 
would then have been among those for whom Deuter- 
onomy provided compensatory maintenance and the 
right to *' minister in the name of Jahveh*' at Jerusa- 
lem. Being people of property, however, they appear 
not to have exercised the right of maintenance. 

That Jeremiah and his family were possessed of 



THE FIRST GREAT HERETIC 259 

means is indicated by a number of circumstances. He 
is able to afford the services of an able amanuensis like 
Baruch. He exercises the privilege of a kinsman to 
keep the family estates intact by purchasing a piece 
of land from his cousin as if it were no great matter. 
Nor does he anywhere in his writings betray concern 
about his personal needs, although he is living away 
from home. 

We may think of him, then, at the opening of his 
career as coming from the country to the city, a very 
young man, of deeply religious temperament, care- 
fully trained in the Levitical tradition of his family, 
and possessed of independent means of livelihood. The 
latter was no inconsiderable advantage when one 
remembers that Amos once found it necessary to repel 
the insinuation that he was dependent for his living 
upon the sacrificial revenues of the priesthood. So far 
as one can see, no prudential considerations, even if he 
had been inclined to heed them, prevented Jeremiah 
from speaking his full conviction about the worthless- 
ness of the sacrificial system. We are inclined, also, to 
agree with Cornill who finds it almost inconceivable 
that the prophet's father should at this time have been 
an officiating priest charged with the administration 
of the cult us which was to the son both an object of 
horror and proof of the nation's blackest disgrace. 

Whether Jeremiah was a supporter and promoter of 
Josiah's reformation is not easy to determine. For 
some time the writer has clung to the belief that a 



26o THE OLD TESTAMENT 

genuine Jeremianic tradition underlies the much-de- 
bated passage about ** this covenant '* ^ in Jer. 1 1 : 1-14. 
If genuine, that passage can refer only to Deuteron- 
omy. Jeremiah, in obeying the divine command to * ' pro- 
claim all these words in the cities of Judah," ^ would 
have become a kind of circuit rider to assist in the pro- 
mulgation and enforcement of the newly discovered law. 
But it is admittedly difficult to account for such 
radically different judgments in the mouth of the same 
person, as are contained in the eleventh and eighth 
chapters of Jeremiah. In the former the prophet is a 
vehement partisan of Deuteronomy, in the latter he 
charges up something to "the lying pen of the scribe.'* 
As Cornill very pointedly observes, it is conceivable 
that Jeremiah might have said: "Cursed is the man 
that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm," ^ but 
never: " Cursed is the man who heedeth not the words 
of this covenant [Deuteronomy].'* * The distinction 
between ritual and ethical requirements, which Deu- 
teronomy fails to make, is the very crux of Jeremiah's 
preaching. Can we, then, without decisive evidence, 
assert that this greatest of Hebrew crusaders against 
ritualism invoked the same curse upon an infringer of 
a food taboo, as upon a violator of justice, and that he 
smote one who neglected to sacrifice the firstlings of 
the flock, with the same judgment as the bearer of false 
witness? 

1 Cf . II Kings 23 : 3. 2 jgr. 11:6. 

8 Jer. 17:5. « Jer. 11:3. 



THE FIRST GREAT HERETIC 261 

Marti long ago maintained that Jeremiah's attitude 
toward Deuteronomy was one of disapproval from the 
beginning.^ Duhm and Cornill, after most exhaustive 
study of Jeremiah's prophecies, have pronounced pos- 
itively against the genuineness of 11 : 1-14, recognizing 
in it the work of a later hand. Since this is the only 
Biblical passage on which the prophet's friendly par- 
ticipation in the Deuteronomic reform can be asserted, 
Marti's judgment appears to have been correct. 
Jeremiah's public activity began five or six years be- 
fore the promulgation of Deuteronomy, and covered the 
whole eventful period during which the new religious 
program was put into force. It was the greatest 
religious event of his time and he could not exercise the 
functions of his office without taking a public attitude 
toward it. Yet the only reference to the Deuteronomic 
movement in his writings which can be construed as 
friendly is contained in a passage which has every 
appearance of having been written for Jeremiah by a 
priestly redactor, who missed the sound of Jeremiah's 
voice in the chorus of approving amens.^ 

In view of all the facts the safest conclusion seems to 
be that Jeremiah never gave his unqualified approval 
to the Deuteronomic program. His preaching shows 
that he must have been in accord with some aspects 
of this attempt to reduce prophetic ideals to practice. 
But when he saw that this ''law of Jahveh" was made 
to play into the hands of the inviolability party ; when 
* Der Profet Jeremia (1889), pp. 9-20. ' Jer. 11:5. 



262 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

its emphasis upon spiritual motives was perverted into 
excessive regard for ritual observances; when the law 
of the single sanctuary, intended to emancipate reli- 
gion from its degrading connection with the former 
Canaanite high places, was invoked for the protection 
of priestly pretensions and a superstitious faith in the 
magic value of the Jerusalem temple, Jeremiah became 
the critic of Deuteronomy and the legalism which its 
ofhcial expounders read into it. ''How can ye say, We 
are wise and the law of Jahveh is with us," he exclaims. 
"But behold the lying pen of the scribes hath made of 
it a falsehood. The wise men are put to shame ; they are 
dismayed and taken ; lo, they have rejected the word of 
Jahveh; and what manner of wisdom is in them?" ^ 

There is increasing agreement among Old Testament 
scholars that this severe reprobation is Jeremiah's 
answer to the book-religionists of his day who claimed 
that the reform of the cultus on the basis of Deuter- 
onomy was a full discharge of their religious obligations. 
He sees a clearly drawn issue between the form and the 
substance of religion, between reform of ceremonial 
and reform of character. In his opinion Josiah's ref- 
ormation has brought no real betterment, for it has 
concerned itself only with the externalities of religion ; 
with physical circumcision and the like, instead of that 
spiritual rebirth which he calls circumcision of the 

1 Jer. 8:8,9. Many see in this passage a direct charge of literary for- 
gery, and it was so understood by the Targum. Must one not reckon, 
also, with the possibility that Jeremiah is referring to the Deuteronomic 
redaction of the older historical works which must have begun by this 
time? See Note B, Appendix. 



THE FIRST GREAT HERETIC 263 

heart. ^ What the book-men regard as a return to God 
is to him mere hypocrisy. ^ 

We have pointed out in a previous chapter that 
Micah attests for his own time the existence of a clique 
or party, composed of elders, priests, and prophets, 
who were inclined to rely for protection upon the 
supposed inviolability of the temple as Jahveh's dwell- 
ing-place. "Jahveh is among us,'* they said, ^'no evil 
can befall us." ^ It is not difficult to imagine what 
reinforcement the views of this inviolability party 
must have received from the Deuteronomic choice of 
Jerusalem as the only legitimate sanctuary. 

In seeking to determine the character and motives 
of the men who constituted this party one must take 
account of Micah's charge that "the heads thereof 
judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for 
hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money. "^ 
Judging by Jeremiah's characterization of their suc- 
cessors in his time they were not a whit better. Inas- 
much as these bribe-takers and pious grafters, bent 
only upon the utmost exploitation of their sacred office 
for personal gain, claimed to be immune from punish- 
ment, because Jahveh could or would not hurl the 
lightnings of his judgment against the temple and the 
temple city, ethical religion had indeed come to a 
serious pass. The reader must bear in mind that sword, 
famine, pestilence and wild bea-sts were according to 

1 Jer. 4:4; cf. 9:24. 2 Jer. 3:10. 

3 Micah 3:11. * Micah 3:11. 



264 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

the theology of that day Jahveh*s *'four grievous 
punishments."^ The inviolabiHty dogma, therefore, 
if true, had the effect of placing the Jerusalemites be- 
yond the reach of Jahveh*s instruments of correction. 

In placing their reliance upon the temple as a guar- 
antee of safety they claimed to be orthodox defenders 
of Deuteronomy. Had not Jahveh by the choice of the 
Jerusalem temple as his ''house" shown his intention 
to dwell there? Had not the reformation been under- 
taken with the divine assurance that the calamities 
threatened in the twenty-eighth chapter of Deuteron- 
omy could still be averted? This being so, who could 
dare to assert that when a god of Jahveh's power had 
chosen a place *'to cause his name to dwell there" he 
would ever allow Judah*s foreign enemies to profane 
it? Thus the opponents of Jeremiah were enabled to 
fortify their position with whatever of passion or prej- 
udice could be aroused in the people by an appeal to 
false orthodoxy and pretended patriotism. 

But our fearless prophet saw only too clearly that 
in making the safety of Judah dependent not upon 
character, but upon the magic value of the sacred 
buildings, his enemies were using the reformation 
itself to create another unmoral faith. The dislodge- 
ment of superstitious regard for the many sacred 
places thus became the unintended means of fostering 
a worse superstition at Jerusalem. Jeremiah states the 
issue uncompromisingly : ** Trust ye not in lying words, 

* Ezek. 14:21; cf. Jer. 21:7, 9. 



THE FIRST GREAT HERETIC 265 

saying, The temple of Jahveh, the temple of Jahveh, 
the temple of Jahveh, is this! For, if ye thoroughly 
amend your ways and your doings; if ye thoroughly 
execute justice between a man and his neighbor; if ye 
oppress not the sojourner (g^r), the fatherless and the 
widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, . . . 
then will I cause you to dwell in this place, in the land 
that I gave to your fathers, from of old even for- 
evermore/'^ 

With equal candor he points out the moral conse- 
quences of their inviolability doctrine. It made Jahveh 
the patron and defender of their wickedness in even a 
more drastic sense than the contemporaries of Amos 
had claimed when they assumed that Jahveh as their 
national deity must as a matter of course protect his 
people. Then it was ^'the day of Jahveh," the expres- 
sion of the divine king's tutelary solicitude for the 
safety of his subjects, that must guarantee immunity 
from every misfortune; now a later generation claims 
to be safe from political disaster because Jahveh must 
hold his chosen and only sanctuary inviolable. 

Jeremiah replies that its use as a shield for evil doers 
would be an incomparably greater violation of its 
sanctity than its destruction at the hands of political 
enemies. '* Behold ye trust in lying words that cannot 
profit. Will ye steal, murder, and commit adultery . . . 
and come and stand before me in this house which is 
called by my name, and say. We are safe ; in order that 

1 Jer. 7:4-7. 



266 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

ye may continue to do all these abominations? Is this 
house which is called by my name become a den of 
robbers in your eyes? Verily, I also regard it as such, 
saith Jahveh." ^ 

With great aptness he then reminds them of the fate 
of the ancient sanctuary of Shiloh to whose destruction 
he alludes as a well-known event, but which no other 
writer of the Old Testament mentions. ^ If Shiloh^s 
destruction was the result of a Philistine foray it was 
not an edifying example of Jahveh's care for his dwell- 
ing-place. Jeremiah explains the event by the usual 
pragmatic standards of the Old Testament as a judg- 
ment of Jahveh for the wickedness of Israel, and fore- 
casts the same fate for Jerusalem. 

^'Go ye now unto my dwelling place which was in 
Shiloh, where I caused my name to dwell in former 
times, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of 
my people Israel. And now because ye have done all 
these evil deeds, saith Jahveh. . . . Therefore will I 
do unto the house which is called by my name, wherein 
ye trust, and unto the place which I gave to you and to 
your fathers, as I did to Shiloh."^ Jeremiah's oppo- 
nents considered this a blasphemous utterance, for it 
was at variance with their understanding of the word 
of Jahveh as they claimed to possess it, black on white 

1 Jer. 7:8-11. 

2 Wellhausen plausibly suggests that Jeremiah must have found an 
account of the destruction of Shiloh where now stands I Sam. 7. There 
is good reason to think that Deuteronomic redactors were responsible 
for its omission. 

3 Jer. 7:12-15. 



THE FIRST GREAT HERETIC 267 

in Deuteronomy. For such cases the book itself pre- 
scribed the penalty: "The prophet who shall presume 
to speak in my name something which I have not com- 
manded him to speak . . . that prophet shall die."^ 
Therefore the embittered priests and prophets accused 
him before the nobles and the people, saying: ''This 
man is worthy of death ; for he hath prophesied against 
this city as ye have heard. "^ Jeremiah's simple and 
courageous defence is, **Jahveh of a truth hath sent 
me unto you to speak all these words in your ears."^ 
How did the Deuteronomist propose to distinguish 
the true prophet from the false? " How shall we know 
the word which Jahveh hath not spoken?"* It is a 
purely external criterion that he establishes. ''When 
a prophet speaketh in the name of Jahveh, if the thing 
follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which 
Jahveh hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken 
it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him,"^ 
i.e. , have no hesitation in putting him to death. A more 
utterly futile test could scarcely be imagined. At best 
it was applicable to prophets of the remote past only — 

1 Dt. 18:20. 2 jer. 26: II. 3 Jer. 26: 15. * Dt. 18:21. 

^ Dt. 18:22. Buttenwieser {Prophets of Israel, p. 29/.) has suggested 
that this law was expressly aimed at such prophetic denials of the divine 
authority of the sacrificial cult as Am. 5:21-25; Hos. 6: 6 and Is. i: 11- 
17; that in view of Dt. 12:32, the text of the law in question should be 
translated: "If it happen that a prophet pronounceth in the name of 
Jahveh that which shall not be or occur, that is the word which Jah- 
veh hath not spoken; presumptuously hath the prophet pronounced it: 
you shall not be afraid of him." Jeremiah then offended against this 
law by declaring "in the name of Jahveh" that the cultus was not 
of divine institution, whereas his opponents claimed Deuteronomy in 
their support with the death penalty. 



268 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

and they were beyond the reach of penalties. Even in 
their case it broke down, for Isaiah and Micah uttered 
predictive prophecies against Jerusalem that had not 
** come to pass " in Jeremiah's time. By the Deuteron- 
omist's criterion they were false prophets and should 
have been put to death. Obviously the law did not 
propose to delay the scrutiny of a prophet's credentials 
for fifty or a hundred years, otherwise the provision of 
a death penalty would have been meaningless. Curi- 
ously enough the Deuteronomist does not even believe 
that Jahveh exercises exclusive control over the factors 
that enter into the proposed test, for those other gods 
in whose real existence and power he still believes, may 
give to their own prophets the same endorsement.^ In 
any case a prophet was stripped of his influence if he 
was not to be believed until his predictions had been 
fulfilled. 

It is needless to dwell upon the impracticability of 
this criterion for the detection of false prophets. It did 
not even raise the question of moral fitness which 
Jeremiah considers the only true test. Had the proph- 
ets opposed to him "stood in the council of God," he 
declares, they would "have turned the people from the 
evil of their doings. "^ The fruits by which the Deute- 
ronomist proposes to judge them are not those of the 
spirit, but those of divination. It made of the prophet 

1 Dt. 13:1 ff.', cf. 4: 19, 20. According to the ideas of the time no 
other explanation is possible than that these successful prognostications 
are due to other divinities who therefore are assumed to possess real 
though relative power and knowledge. 

2 Jer. 23:21, 22; cf. Micah 3:7, 8. 



THE FIRST GREAT HERETIC 269 

a foreteller instead of forthteller. What is worse, the 
bookmen now possessed in this false criterion an instru- 
ment admirably adapted for the stifling of real proph- 
ecy which since the days of Amos had addressed itself 
not _ to signs and wonders, but to the moral con- 
sciousness of the people. Failure to perceive and take 
account of this change of base in prophetism is one of 
the characteristic limitations of Deuteronomy. Jere- 
miah's enemies constitute themselves the custodians 
and interpreters of the book, and proceed to silence the 
living voice of prophecy. The tragic seriousness of the 
situation is sufficiently indicated in the arrest of Jere- 
miah by the false prophets who derive their warrant 
from Deuteronomy, and in the slaying of Uriah who 
did no more than to prophesy "according to all the 
words of Jeremiah."^ 

Thus the first heresy trial was instituted when the 
first authoritatively accepted book of the Bible had 
been in use less than two decades, a period during 
which it probably had received some additions from 
"the lying pen of the scribes. "^ Had it not been for 
some laymen who pointed out that Micah the Morash- 
tite, under precisely similar circumstances a hundred 
years earlier, had prophesied the destruction of Jerusa- 
lem and its temple without being molested, Jeremiah 
probably would have fallen a victim to the unhallowed 
fanatical zeal of his priestly enemies. 

1 Jer. 26:20-24. 

2 Steuernagel, Marti, and others consider Dt. i8: 14-22 such an ad- 
dition. 



270 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

If we are correct in our estimate of the part which 
Deuteronomy is made to play in the persecution of 
Jeremiah, this heresy trial affords the first authentic 
illustration of what has often taken place in the 
history of religion. As soon as a given stage of religious 
development becomes fixed in writing and barnacled 
with dogmas, the growing moral and intellectual needs 
of a new age begin to lower the lifeboats. In the ne- 
cessity of choice which then arises between dogma and 
ethics, the orthodox usually take the dogma and the 
heretics the ethics. Unfortunately it belongs to the 
tragedy of religion that this conflict renews itself in 
every age; for it invariably happens that heretics of 
one age become the orthodox of the next, who then 
take their turn in attempting to retard the march of 
moral progress. 

It should be observed that the acceptance of the 
temple as a palladium by the inviolability party was 
only an extension of popular confidence in the efficacy 
of sacrifices to secure the favor of Jahveh. The issue 
between Jeremiah and his opponents, therefore, relates 
in the last analysis to the cultus. Deuteronomy takes 
for granted the existence and continuance of a sacri- 
ficial system, but says nothing about its origin or its 
significance. It merely provides for such modifications 
as are made necessary by the appointment of a single 
sanctuary. We have elsewhere sought to show that 
Deuteronomy apparently knows nothing about a sub- 
stitutionary or expiatory use of sacrifice. That is a 



THE FIRST GREAT HERETIC 271 

later product of the developing priestly religion. In the 
Deuteronomic programme the system appears to have 
been retained as an institution of social religion and as 
a means of support for the priesthood. 

The priests and false prophets at Jerusalem con- 
strued this permissive attitude as a mandatory one, 
and encouraged the people to think that sacrifices were 
offered to God as a quid pro quo, as a consideration in a 
contract. Jeremiah faces this issue uncompromisingly 
by declaring that Jahveh never gave any commands about 
sacrifices in the Mosaic period. Apparently the prophet 
is living in an atmosphere different from that in which 
Amos and Isaiah ^ spoke their mind about the cultus. 
They could take for granted as well known that God 
had given no commands about sacrifice. Jeremiah 
speaks as one who is opposing a prevailing opinion to 
the contrary. 

The explanation lies in the fact that Deuteronomy 
had appeared in the mean time. Among other osten- 
sibly Mosaic legislation it contained regulatory pre- 
scriptions regarding sacrifices at the central sanctuary. 
When these were exploited as mandatory and of di- 
vine origin, Jeremiah stigmatizes them as the product 
of "the lying pen of the scribes." This, he declares, 
is what God really says about their man-made rit- 
ual: "Add your burnt-offerings unto your sacrifices, 
and eat ye flesh. For I spake not unto your fathers, 
nor commanded them in the day that I brought them 

* Am. 5:25; Is. 1:12. 



272 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt-ofiFerings 
and sacrifices."^ 

It would be difficult to overrate the significance of 
the prophet's statement which eliminates both the 
temple and the cultus from the essential uses of reli- 
gion. Would he have thus contradicted the evidence 
of the twelfth chapter of Deuteronomy if he had 
believed sacrifice to be a divinely instituted means of 
obtaining forgiveness from God? According to his the- 
ology, repentance and good works were the sole require- 
ments. His complaint is that *^no one repents of his 
wickedness, "2 but that all rely upon the cultus to 
expiate their sins. If you think, he says, that the eat- 
ing of a sacrificial meal will sanctify you and render you 
acceptable to God, why do you not eat the meat of the 
burnt-offerings besides that of the regular sacrifices? 
Why not gorge yourselves with holiness ? The prophet's 
contempt has spoken its utmost in these lines! 

Of cognate importance is an interesting passage ^ 
about the "ark of the covenant" which one is tempted, 
with Erbt, to claim for Jeremiah, in spite of its being 
imbedded in clearly secondary material. The writer 
covets the time when Hebrew religion will be rid of the 
ark and no one will worry about it any longer. This 
may be taken to imply condemnation of the supersti- 

1 Jer. 7:21, 22; 6:20. Jeremiah specifies the period of the Exodus be- 
cause the legislation of Deuteronomy is put into the mouth of Moses. 
Later the Priests' Code went a step further than Deuteronomy and at- 
tributed even the origin of the sacrificial system to its minutest details to 
divine commands received by Moses. 

* Jer. 8:6. 3 Jer. 3:16. 



THE FIRST GREAT HERETIC 273 

tious veneration accorded to it in earlier times, and so 
marks a long advance over primitive ideas reflected in 
the story of Uzzah's death, a story whose assumptions 
about God are shockingly crude and false from a 
Christian point of view. After all it matters little 
whether Jeremiah uttered these words about the ark. ' 
His attitude toward the cultus, and toward the temple 
as a palladium, necessarily included the ark. It seems 
almost incredible that later Judaism should have far 
enough mistaken the spirit of Jeremiah to make him 
the hero of a legend in which he hides the ark and the 
altar of incense in a cave on Mount Nebo! Jeremiah's 
instinctive conviction that religion is a matter of the 
heart and must express itself practically in conforming 
conduct to moral law made it impossible for him to 
encourage faith in such survivals of the beggarly ele- 
ments of religion. That he continued to objectify the 
content of the moral law in terms of divine commands 
and prohibitions is necessarily incidental to the theol- 
ogy of his time. 

There is another important respect in which Jere- 
miah transcends the limitations of Deuteronomy. So 
far as the evidence of Hebrew literature is concerned 
this prophet is the first ethical monotheist of Israel. 
Unlike the Deuteronomist he does not believe that 
Jahveh shares the rule of the world with other deities. 
Nor does he expressly limit God's interest to Israel 
alone, leaving other nations to the tender mercies of 
the deities which the Deuteronomist had allotted to 



274 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

them.^ We have elsewhere ^ pointed out that as ethi- 
cal monotheism such a view of God's relation to man- 
kind is unworthy of the name. It is only a modified 
henotheism in which the idea of a national God squares 
itself with a belief in Jahveh's supremacy over other 
deities whose real existence is not as yet questioned. 
Jeremiah takes higher ground. He frankly denies 
the existence of the Deuteronomist's vicegerent deities 
by calling them ** no-gods," nonentities. The following 
passage, in fact, seems to contain an allusion to the 
theory that Jahveh has assigned to foreign nations the 
subordinate deities which are the objects of their wor- 
ship : " O Jahveh, my strength and my stronghold, and 
my refuge in the day of affliction, unto thee shall the 
nations come from the ends of the earth, and shall say, 
Our fathers have inherited naught but lies [i.e., false 
gods], even vanity and things wherein is no profit. 
Can a man make for himself gods — which yet are no 
gods? "3 

In removing these deities from the category of gods, 
and in voicing the protest of foreign nations against the 
partiality and injustice of such a restricted disposi- 
tion of divine favor, Jeremiah takes the last step that 
•"needed to be taken toward ethical as well as theoretical 
monotheism. When the prophet calls these deities 
*' no-gods," he is by the logic of the situation compelled 

* Dt. 4: 19, 20. ■ 2 Page 210/. 

^ Jer. 16: 19, 20; cf. 2: 10, 11; 5: 7. Duhm regards the passage as sec- 
ondary, but Cornill maintains its authenticity; cf. also 48:35, and 49:2 
(LXX) which may be echoes of Jeremiah's teaching. Jer. 32: 27, which 
contains the expression "God of all flesh," is certainly by a later hand. 



THE FIRST GREAT HERETIC 275 

to break the bonds of a particularistic conception of 
God, or to leave all foreign nations without objects of 
worship — godless in the strict sense. He has too pro- 
found and true a conception of Jahveh's character to 
choose the latter alternative, although he cannot and 
does not at all points free himself from the trammels 
of the national-god idea. 

In view of the fact that ethical monotheism and 
universalism naturally go together, one is disposed to 
expect on the part of Jeremiah a clear recognition of 
the fact that God sustains a direct relationship to 
other nations also. But passages which reflect this 
idea are extremely few and of such a character that 
they are open to controversy as to their authenticity. 
There is the parable of the potter who remoulds the 
vessels that are accidentally marred under his hands. ^ 
The lesson that so God will spare any nation that 
repents and turns from evil, even though in his secret 
counsel he had resolved **to pluck up and destroy," is 
by many thought to have furnished inspiration for the 
fine universalism of the Book of Jonah. Unfortunately, 
there is no reasonable certainty that this potter section 
of the text came from Jeremiah. 

Similar uncertainty attaches to another passage ^ in 
which it is stated that God will "return and have 
compassion" on Judah's ''evil neighbours" when the 

1 Jer. 18:1-10. Both Duhm and Cornill regard verses 5-10 as sec- 
ondary. The latter accepts verses 1-4, and sees in them an expression of 
anti-predestinarian views of God and the world. 

2 Jer. 12:14-16. 



276 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

demands of divine justice have been satisfied. This in- 
clusion of the heathen in Jahveh's compassionate pur- 
poses ends with the remarkably evangelical forecast of 
a time when neighboring nations shall learn to worship 
Jahveh as the Israelites learned to worship Baal. 

But even though it were clearly shown that these 
passages are authentic utterances of Jeremiah, — and 
there is nothing in them which is inconsistent with the 
spirit of his teaching, — a candid reader of his book 
will have to admit that even this great prophet did not 
rise fully to a conception of Jahveh's undiscriminating 
and fatherly interest in all mankind. He did not yet 
clearly see or point out the consequences of his own 
ethical individualism. In his message the God of Israel 
still is at times a jealous partisan, and even where he 
brings Israel into unfavorable comparison with other 
peoples,^ he assumes that the Hebrews have an ex- 
clusive place in Jahveh's favor. 

But the spirit of Jeremiah's utterances, and the 
significant nuance which he gives to his characteriza- 
tions of Jahveh, show that he is leading prophetic 
thought in the direction of a broader humanity. It is 
apparent, for instance, in the very different senses in 
which Jeremiah and Ezekiel employ the expression 
"to know Jahveh." ^ Ezekiel is a man of narrower ^/^ 
sympathies who does not get beyond the particularism 
of Deuteronomy. But Deutero- Isaiah, the Great Un-v 

1 Jer. 2: 10. 

2 Jer. 9:6, 24; 24: 7, etc.; cf. Ezek. 20:26; 6: 10; 12:20, etc. 



THE FIRST GREAT HERETIC 277 

known of the exile, picks up the smouldering torch of 
Jeremiah and fans it into a blaze of light. 

Jeremiah, like his predecessors, believed in the power 
of Jahveh's judgments to touch the springs of action 
and so to bring about a change of conduct. His heroic 
defence of Jahveh's freedom to punish, as against those 
who claimed immunity for Jerusalem, indicates how 
little disposed he was to relinquish the moral lever- 
age of this belief. In his conflict with Hananiah, the 
prophet of peace, he makes the point that the true 
Hebrew prophets from time immemorial have '* pro- 
phesied ... of war, of evil, and of pestilence." ^ If any 
one now prophesies national prosperity, the accepted 
sign of Jahveh's approval, he will not need to wait long 
for his answer. Jahveh, expressing his moral judgment 
in the political events of the immediate future, must 
decide the issue in Jeremiah's favor. For in his opinion 
there is not a single just or truthful man in Jerusalem. ^ 

Since the growth of ethical ideals in Old Testament 
times is closely associated with the rise of ethical in- 
dividualism, it is proper to enquire whether Jeremiah 
succeeds in breaking away from the group-morality of 
Deuteronomy and the idea that the nation, rather than 
the individual, is subject to rewards and punishments. 
It must be confessed that the most careful scrutiny of 
Jeremiah's preaching reveals no appreciable departure 
from the hitherto accepted beliefs. His warnings and 
his promises are Jahveh's word to the nation, or to 

ijer. 28:8, 9. 2 jer. 5:1; 8:6, 13-15. 



278 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

such divisions of it as have been created by political 
events, not by the personal worthiness or un worthiness 
of individuals.^ Nor does he manifest any scruple 
about the inclusion of children under the judgments he 
proclaims, for the allusion ^ to the proverb about the 
fathers who have eaten sour grapes has almost cer- 
tainly been added by some one who was dependent 
\upon Ezekiel. Children are part of the whole, and 
share the weal or woe, the innocence or the guilt, of 
that social group, the nation, which is still the subject 
of religion in the formal categories of his thinking. 

But it is a remarkable fact that while he does not 
enunciate a doctrine of individual responsibility, yet 
his conception of God and religion, taken as a whole, 
has served as a powerful stimulus toward the recogni- 
tion of the moral value of the individual.^ The ritual 
homage which he disparages was chiefly identified with 
communal and official religion ; but the moral obedience 
which he advocates points directly to the individual. 
This is the real bearing of the fine passage in which 
Jeremiah, or some one who had caught his spirit, con- 
trasts the priestly type of religion with his own hope of 
a better one: '* I will put my law in their inward parts 
and in their heart will I write it."^ Conduct born 
of the knowledge of a law graven upon the heart is 

1 Jer. chap. 24; 42 : 7 /. ; 21 : 8 /. 

2 Jer. 31:29, 30 ; cf. 7: 18; Dt. 24:16. 

3 One of the best discussions of the subject is an article by J. M. P. 
Smith in AJT, vol. X (1906), entitled "The Rise of Individualism among 
the Hebrews," now in his book, The Prophet and his Problems (1914). 

* Jer. 31:33. 



THE FIRST GREAT HERETIC 279 

not found in the chain-gang of a formal state reli- 
gion. When Jeremiah characterizes Jahveh as one who 
searches the heart as the seat of evil passions, and tries 
the kidneys as the seat of the mind,^ even his physio- 
logical psychology goes in search of the individual. 
While his conception of the circumcision of the heart, 
of the facing about which is demanded, ^ is to be re- 
garded as only an approximation to the New Testa- 
ment idea of conversion, its implications are necessarily 
individualistic. Finally, Jeremiah is himself the most 
conspicuous example in the Old Testament of religion 
individualized in a person. The revelations he makes 
of his own religious experience, his assurance of the 
validity of his call, his testimony to the compulsive 
power of his conscience, — these carry a strong implied 
recognition of the moral autonomy of the individual. 
He stands for an untraditionalized conscience and an 
open road. 

To be able to feel certain that the famous passage 
about the new covenant ^ is from Jeremiah's pen would 
be a great satisfaction. An appeal from the Deuter- 
onomic law-book to a law graven upon the heart would 
have been a fitting climax to his long struggle against 
ritualism and externalism in the religion of his time. A 
few recent students of the Book of Jeremiah, among 
them Cornill, as yet see no sufficient reason for aban- 
doning Jeremiah's authorship of the passage. Never- 

1 Jer. 17 :9, lo; ii :20. ^ Jer. 8 :5. 

3 Jer. 31:31-34. 



280 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

theless, It is difficult to overlook the fact that it stands 
in a context of secondary material, and has secondary 
marks of its own. But whether it be Jeremiah's or not, 
there can be no doubt that it expresses precisely the 
spirit and aim of Jeremiah's work. 

As in the case of Isaiah, we have made no attempt to 
present a critical survey of genuine and secondary ma- 
terials in the Book of Jeremiah. The literary analysis 
is too intricate and technical for discussion in such a 
work as this. We must refer the reader to the com- 
mentaries of Duhm and Cornill, to the characteriza- 
tions of Jeremiah by Marti and Erbt, and to the stan- 
dard works on Introduction. Few great characters of 
the Old Testament have suffered more through dis- 
torting additions by later editors than Jeremiah. We 
have tried to make him stand forth in his own char- 
acter, revealed by his own or Baruch's writings, so far 
as the most careful critical analysis can determine 
them. The recovery of such a superb personality from 
under the daubs of supplementers is a task worthy of 
all the skill that reverent scholarship can bring to it. 



CHAPTER X 

THE REPUDIATION OF RITUAL RELIGION BY THE 
PRE-EXILIC PROPHETS 

Few mistakes have introduced greater confusion into 
the study of Old Testament religion than the hoary as- 
sumption that the great prophets and the ritual laws of 
the Pentateuch agree in their valuation of sacrifice. 
In Ezekiel, Leviticus and kindred priestly literature 
God*s favor is dependent upon a strict performance of 
the ritual. The prophets from Amos to Jeremiah de- 
nounce and repudiate this view. In the issue which they 
raise between ethical and ritual purity they make the 
sanction of God go with the former and deny any in- 
trinsic value to the latter. In our opinion Professor 
G. B. Gray does not put the case too strongly when 
he says, '* It is not the institution, but the repudiation, 
of sacrifice, that distinguishes the religion of Israel." ^ 
It is scarcely necessary to observe that the phrase 
*' ritual purity" is a misnomer of ancient lineage, a 
legacy from times of magic and superstition. The ex- 
pression describes a quality of taboo devoid of any in- 
herent connection with moral purity. 

Attention has been directed, in previous chapters, to 
certain well-known passages in which Amos, Hosea, 
Isaiah, and Jeremiah, strongly disparage the sacrificial 
1 Isaiah, Int. Crit. Com. (1912), p. 17. 



282 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

cult. The importance attached to it in popular religion, 
they declare, is not only without warrant of divine 
authority, but is a menace to acceptable religion, which 
must consist primarily in the practice of justice and 
humanity. It will be useful to unite their actual testi- 
mony on this point into a single focus. 

I. Amos, speaking for Jahveh, declares: *'I hate, I 
despise your sacrificial feasts, and I will not smell [the 
savor of] your festal assemblies. Yea, though ye offer 
me your burnt-offerings and meal-offerings, I will not 
accept them; neither will I regard the peace-offerings 
of your fat beasts. Take thou away from me the noise 
of thy songs ; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols. 
But let justice roll down as waters, and righteous- 
ness as an everflowing stream. Did ye bring unto me 
sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, 
O house of Israel?" ^ 

The first of the ritual functions denounced by Amos 
is the pilgrim-feast or hag, celebrated with animal 
sacrifices, processions, feasting, and dancing. Accord- 
ing to the early documents it is this particular kind of 
feast that Moses declares Jahveh has commanded the 
Israelites to celebrate at Mount Sinai. ^ There was a 
cycle of three great pilgrim-feasts which Moses com- 
manded on the authority of Jahveh, and their observ- 
ance was deemed so important an element of institu- 
tional religion that they were incorporated into the 

1 Am. 5:21-25. 

2 Ex. 5 : 1 ; 10: 9, etc. Ex. 23: 14, represents Jahveh as giving the com- 
mand "three times shalt thou hold a pilgrim-feast to me in the year." 



RITUAL RELIGION REPUDIATED 283 

Jahvistic decalogue of the thirty-fourth chapter of 
Exodus. The second ritual observance is the 'asarah, 
or festival period during which men observe the cere- 
monial taboos intended to render them ritually clean 
(^asUr) for the consumption of the **holy'* sacrificial 
meat. Amos declares these rites and observances dis- 
gusting in the eyes of Jahveh, and assumes that during 
the nomadic period of Israel's religion on the southern 
steppes such sacrificial functions formed no part of 
their religion. Let them, he says ironically, come to 
Bethel and to Gilgal to celebrate their pilgrim-feasts; 
let them bring their sacrifices every morning, and their 
tithes every three days. Atonements for sin? Yes, 
merry additions and multiplication of transgression! 
Gifts to Jahveh? Observe his return gifts — ''clean- 
ness of teeth," drought, pestilence, and the sword! 
"This [ritual religion] pleaseth yoUy O ye children of 
Israel, saith the Lord Jahveh!" ^ 

2. Hosea's attitude toward the sacrificial cultus is 
set forth in the classic statement of Jahveh: ''I desire 
goodness, and not sacrifice; the knowledge of God, and 
not burnt-offerings." ^ Another passage, remarkably 
similar to the one quoted from Amos, charges that the 
sacrificial altars only furnish occasion for sinning. In- 
stead of observing the real requirements of God, "the 
ten thousand things of his [my] law," ''they delight in 
the sacrificial feasts, sacrifice flesh and eat it"; there- 

lAm. 4:4Jf. 

2 Hos.6:6. For details about this passage see p. 155, footnote. 



284 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

fore Jahveh ''will remember their iniquity, and punish 
their sins." ^ 

3. Isaiah, in a passage of unsurpassed vigor, de- 
clares: "What unto me is the multitude of your 
sacrifices? saith Jahveh: I have had enough of the 
burnt-offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts ; and 
I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or 
of he-goats. When ye come to see my face, who hath 
required this at your hand? Cease from trampling 
my courts, nor bring me vain oblations; incense is an 
abomination unto me; new moon and sabbath, the 
calling of assemblies — I cannot [abide them] ; away 
with fast and festal assembly ('asarah). Your new 
moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth; 
they are a burden unto me; I am weary of bearing 
them." 2 He not only challenges his co-religionists to 
show where or when God ever instituted the sacrificial 
cultus; but he expressly declares that their "fear" of 
Jahveh, their religion, is "a precept of men learned by 
rote." ' By this religion, of course, he means nothing 
else than the sacrificial cultus. 

4. Jeremiah was living at a time when the priests 
in charge of the centralized cultus at Jerusalem were 
beginning to claim divine authority for it, probably 
basing their claim upon Deuteronomy. But he denies 
the divine sanction claimed, and so joins Isaiah in 
stigmatizing it as a man-made ritual. "Thus saith 

1 Hos. 8:11-13. Cf. Marti, Dodekapropheton, p. 69; Guthe, HSAT, 
II, p. 12. 

2 Is. 1:11-14; cf. 28:7, 8; 22:12-14. '13.29:13. 



RITUAL RELIGION REPUDIATED 285 

Jahveh of hosts, the God of Israel: Add your burnt- 
offerings unto your sacrifices, and eat ye flesh. For I 
spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in 
the day that I brought them out of Egypt, concerning 
burnt-offerings and sacrifices.'* ^ 

Like his predecessors he cherishes a tradition about 
the religion of the Mosaic period which is the very op- 
posite of that held by those who see in Moses the pro- 
mulgator of the ritual laws of the Pentateuch: ''Thus 
saith Jahveh, Stand ye in the ways and see and ask for 
the old paths [of Jahveh], and note which is the good 
way ; and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your 
souls: but they said. We will not walk therein. Then 
I set watchmen over them [saying]: Hearken to the 
sound of the alarm- tr umpet ; but they said. We will 
not hearken. ... To what purpose cometh there to 
me frankincense from Sheba and calamus from a far 
country? Your burnt-offerings are not acceptable, nor 
your sacrifices pleasing unto me." ^ The ancient paths 
of Jahveh, as he has elsewhere indicated, are the paths 
of morality, preached by Jahveh's watchmen, the 
prophets. Departure from them cannot be counter- 
vailed by even the latest and costliest refinements of 
the cultus. 

These solemn declarations of the futility of sacri- 

* Jer. 7:21, 22. 

2 Jer. 6:16, 17, 20. Verses 18-19 break the connection and must be an 
insertion by a later hand. The testimony of the passage is not materially 
affected, even though one were, on metrical grounds, to regard the refer- 
ence to burnt-offerings and sacrifices as secondary. For details the 
student must be referred to the commentaries of Duhm and Cornill. 



286 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

fices, and the prophets' settled conviction that the 
introduction of the sacrificial cultus constituted a 
corruption of an earlier and purer religion, are signifi- 
cant. Amos, for instance, assumed that the religion of 
Israel's wilderness days was non-sacrificial, and con- 
sequently better than that of his contemporaries. If 
this better religion was Mosaic it was obviously wo^ 
the elaborately ritualistic religion ascribed to Moses in 
the Pentateuch. There clearly were two religions^ one 
of the priests, the other of the prophets. Despite the 
latter' s unequivocal repudiation of all sacrifices as 
such, the priestly epigones of the legalistic period of 
Hebrew religion obscured these denunciations with 
their additions and revisions in order that they might 
seem to refer only to transgressions of ritual regula- 
tions governing the where, how, and by whom; not to 
the sacrificial system itself. In this way they twisted 
the prophetic writings into a superficial harmony with 
their views. 

The magnificent peroration of a later prophetic 
writer, who sums up the points of emphasis in the 
teaching of Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah, shows how com- 
pletely, for him as for them, the question, "What is 
pleasing to God?" had passed the stage of specula- 
tion. '*Will Jahveh be pleased," he asks, "with thou- 
sands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? 
Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit 
of my body for the sin of my soul?" In his classic 
reply there is no place for sacrifice. What Jahveh re- 



RITUAL RELIGION REPUDIATED 28; 

quires is "to do justly*' (Amos), "and to love kind- 
ness" (Hosea), "and to walk humbly with thy God" 
(Isaiah).^ 

The work of the prophets had, in some minds at 
least, achieved the conviction that God's requirements 
were of a moral character, and that material sacrifices 
were not moral. It follows that Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, 
Jeremiah, and the author of the last passage quoted, 
could not have believed in a divinely revealed ritual 
such as that of Leviticus claims to be, even if it had 
been in existence in their time. Holding sacrifices to be 
worthless, they necessarily held the sacrificial cultus 
equally worthless. The contrary view was irrecon- 
cilable with their conception of Jahveh's character. 

It was in the nature of things to be expected that 
the more thoughtful religious leaders of Israel would 
sooner or later become convinced that sacrifices are 
in themselves an irrational element of religion. The 
writer of a Psalm, ^ which unfortunately is not dateable, 
saw this most clearly, for he ridicules the idea that 
sacrifices are gifts of food for the deity, a notion which 
continued to linger in the Levitical phrase "the food 
of his God."^ "Mine," he makes God say, "are the 
cattle on a thousand hills . . . the world and the fulness 
thereof. If I were hungry I would not tell thee." In 

^ Micah 6:6-8. This passage, probably, must be dated after the exile; 
the writer was kindred in spirit with Deutero- Isaiah, Job, the writer of 
Jonah, and one or two Psalmists. 

2 Ps. 50:7-15. 

3 Lev. 21 : 17, 21, 22 ; cf. Ezek. 41:22. The altar as the table of Jah- 
veh; Mai. 1:12-14; Micah 6:6. 



288 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

the thought of this writer the gift-theory of sacrifice 
involves a humiliatingly petty conception of God's per- 
son, power, and desires. 

It is natural to assume that the view of sacrifice 
which he ridicules was uppermost among those whom 
he desired to reach. In that case his failure to allude 
to sacrifices of atonement is significant. Was the 
later belief that "apart from shedding of blood there 
is no remission" of sin really a deep-seated Old Testa- 
ment idea, as the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
asserts, or is it the offspring of that priestly ritual 
whose authority and presuppositions the prophets so 
strenuously denied? ^ 

The answer to this question would require a treatise 
by itself. The subject of sacrifice in the Old Testament 
is complicated, and has too often been treated without 
appreciation of the complex tendencies and counter- 
tendencies of thought and practice that have left their 
record in Israel's literature. For present purposes it 

* A curious old ceremonial, described in Dt. 21 : 1-9, has been used to 
support the idea of penal substitution. But only a precarious argument 
can be based upon it. The priests, who are mere spectators, have been 
introduced by a glossator in verse 5. The sacrifice of the heifer, which is 
not killed by effusion of blood, is clearly intended to quiet the venge- 
ful activity of the spirit of the slain. For this reason, the nearest city, 
which may or may not harbor the murderer, must be ascertained, be- 
cause it would be the most likely to suffer. If any penal substitution is 
involved, it is of more interest to the f olklorist than to the theologian. 
Lev. 17: 11-13 introduces the idea of atonement by blood, but hardly 
through penal substitution. Blood, being peculiarly sacred to Jahveh, 
has mysterious lustral qualities and its use is attended with supernat- 
ural dangers. The attempted explanation of the rite in verse lib shows 
how atonement by ritual magic is beginning to be invested with a theo- 
logical meaning. 



RITUAL RELIGION REPUDIATED 289 

is enough to know that at least one Hebrew thinker 
of deep religious convictions sums up prophetic 
teaching by explicitly discarding as irrational the 
thought that human, animal, or vegetable ^ sacrifices 
can atone for sins committed. ** Shall I give my first- 
born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for 
the sin of my soul?" 

The sacrifice of the first-born, according to ancient 
notions of divine requirements, was the most propitia- 
tory offering that could be made to the deity. If that 
was not effectual, how much less so, then, would be 
the blood of calves and rams. This writer, apparently, 
is living at a time when official Jahvism had placed 
human sacrifice of all kinds under severe disapproval. 
But by heightening the value of the ceremonial offer- 
ings to the utmost, he gives point to his conviction that 
the blood of no sacrifice whatsoever can wash the stain 
of sin from the human soul. Apparently he knows 
nothing about the alleged word of Jahveh, **I have 
given [the blood] to you upon the altar to make atone- 
ment for your souls. *^ ^ Atonement cannot be effected 
by sacrifice, the performance of a ritual, for that would 
be to substitute a mechanical act for repentance and 
reform. The experience of divine forgiveness comes to 

' Olive oil was anciently used in propitiatory and expiatory libations 
(Gen. 28:18; Micah 6:7). Lev. 5:11 permits the substitution of fine 
flour for two turtle doves as a sin offering. Oil and flour, as in domestic 
use, were mingled in the meal offering. 

2 Lev. 17:11. In the Law of Holiness (chaps. 17-26) to which this pas- 
sage belongs, all blood of sacrifices still has atoning efficacy; elsewhere in 
the Priests' Code special sacrifices of atonement are provided. 



290 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

each soul only through its own moral endeavor, the 
fruit of repentance.^ 

Do the pre-exilic prophets exhibit any tolerance of 
the cultus at all, or are they opposed to it on principle 
as a snare and a delusion? This question is raised by 
the fact that Deuteronomy, which represents a com- 
promise between priestly and prophetic tendencies, 
retains a place for the sacrificial ritual. If the prophets 
were uncompromising radicals, bent on eliminating 
sacrifice altogether, why did they permit its authoriza- 
tion in the Deuteronomic programme of reform? One 
might reply that Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah 
were no longer living when Deuteronomy was drawn 
up, and therefore had no opportunity to approve or 
reject its provisions; that Deuteronomy only medi- 
ately embodies prophetic ideals, but was directly in- 
fluenced by men of priestly temperament; and that 
Jeremiah, who continued the anti-ritualistic traditions 
of the earlier prophets, did remain an uncompro- 
mising opponent even of the reformed ritual of Deu- 
teronomy. 

Such a reply would undoubtedly contain the sub- 
stantial truth. One may add further that these proph- 
ets never speak of the sacrificial ritual as an obligatory 
function, and never propose to substitute a new or 
modified ritual for the one they condemn. Sacrifices 
have no organic place in the religion of the proph- 
ets. Even Hosea, when he mentions the cessation of 

1 Micah 6:8. 



RITUAL RELIGION REPUDIATED 291 

sacrifices among the mournful changes which will be 
consequent upon the deportation of his countrymen, 
clearly intends to impress them with the fact that what 
they consider most important has no weight at all 
with Jahveh.^ 

Yet the tone of personal regret in which he speaks, 
the absence of any organized movement to abolish 
sacrifices altogether, and the fact that the Deutero- 
nomic reform of the cultus received sympathy and sup- 
port in prophetic circles, are points that call for expla- 
nation. It must be sought in the double character of 
the system. The sacrificial cultus was a social as well 
as a religious institution. Divested of its ritual sig- 
nificance, there remained in it much that might con- 
tribute to the comfort and happiness of the people. 
Since all slaughtering of animals was in itself a sacri- 
ficial act among the Hebrews, no meat could properly 
be eaten except in ritual connections. Therefore every 
sacrifice involved a feast, and no feast could be pro- 
vided without a sacrifice. On the designated festal 
days the whole countryside streamed to the sanctuary. 
Crowds arrayed in gay attire came with music and 
song, leading the sacrificial victims and bringing with 
them bread and wine to set forth the feast. With open- 
handed hospitality guests were made welcome at the 

■ * Hos. 3:4 (Guthe, HSAT), and Is. 19: 21, are in all probability addi- 
tions by a later hand and therefore do not figure in this connection. Jer. 
17: 26, is an editorial addition, like the last two verses of Psalm 51. Jer. 
33 : 1 8, is part of a section which is missing in the LXX. It certainly did 
not flow out of the pen or thought of Jeremiah. 



292 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

banquet where rich and poor made merry together and 
so "rejoiced before Jahveh." ^ 

The prophets may well have hesitated before at- 
tempting to deprive the people of this source of com- 
mon joys. Could superstitious faith in the objective 
efhcacy of such sacrifices as means of atonement 
for sin, or gifts of appeasement, be ethically purified 
and yet leave the people the social benefits of the in- 
stitution? Amos and Isaiah must have asked them- 
selves that question even while, as Jahveh's spokesmen, 
they were saying: "I hate, I despise your [sacrificial] 
feasts, and will not smell [the appetizing savor of] your 
festal assemblies." It was the prospective loss, through 
exile, of Israel's keenest joys, deeply rooted about 
Jahveh's altars, that stirred the regret of Hosea when 
he said: "They shall no longer pour out wine for 
Jahveh, nor prepare their sacrifices for him. Like the 
bread of mourning shall their food be; all who eat 
thereof shall be [ritu^lly] defiled ; for their bread shall 
be only for their appetite; it shall not come into the 
house of Jahveh." ^ it seems obvious that the prophet 
is not concerned here with the expiatory uses of sacri- 
fice, but with the profound and mournful changes 

1 Cf. I Sam. 9: 11-24; Is. 30:29; 28:7, 8; Hos. 2: 13. Cf. also W. R. 
Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 254/. 

2 Hos. 9 : 4. "The bread of mourning " is a reference to an ancient and 
widespread superstition according to which everything connected with 
a dead person is taboo for a given period. Cf. Num. 19: 14; Jer. 16: 7; Dt. 
26 : 14. To the ancient Hebrews all food in a foreign land would have been 
taboo: (i) because of the presence and rule of foreign gods; (2) because 
neither meat, nor fruits and cereals, could have the customary sanction 
of the sacrificial ritual. 



RITUAL RELIGION REPUDIATED 293 

which their cessation would effect in the social customs 
of the people. 

But there is another, even more distinctly humanita- 
rian, reason why the prophets may have shrunk from 
advocating so radical a step as the entire abolition of 
sacrifices. A considerable percentage of the most in- 
fluential part of the population, the communities of 
professional prophets and the priesthood, charged 
among other things with the administration of civil 
justice, was in some measure dependent for its living 
upon the sacrificial system. In modern phrase, out of 
the worshippers' offerings came the judges' and min- 
isters' salaries. 

It seems certain that the firstlings of the flock, which 
the Jahvist ^ represents God as claiming for himself, 
went partly to the support of the priests. The same 
explanation applies to the command, ''The first of 
the first-fruits of thy ground thou shalt bring unto the 
house of Jahveh thy God." At first the function of the 
priest was to attend to the oracle. Heads of families 
did the sacrificing. Much frequented sanctuaries must 
have required the priest's services, also, as guardian 
and overseer. This service naturally became the basis 
of his claim to support out of the sacrificial offerings. 
Thus giving to God was in a fair way to become a 
euphemism for giving to the priest. 

It is not surprising, therefore, to find among the 
earliest ritual regulations, recorded by the Jahvist, one 

» Ex. 34:19, 20. 



294 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

which makes Jahveh say: "None shall appear before 
me empty. . . . Three times in the year shall all thy 
males appear before the Lord Jahveh, the God of 
Israel." ^ To "appear before" God was the popular 
way of describing a visit to the sanctuary where the 
ancient Hebrew believed his deity dwelt and gave 
audience. Since "to serve Jahveh" meant nothing 
currently except to offer sacrifice, ^ each was expected 
to bring his sacrificial offerings. The larger sanctuaries 
had their priesthoods, and these necessarily had a deep 
interest in seeing to it that worshippers did not come 
empty-handed. 

Even the best human nature poured into the sacer- 
dotal mould would find it difficult to resist the tempta- 
tions which such a system presented. The more occa- 
sions the priests could find for imposing sacrificial fines 
the more profit to themselves. Alleged transgressions 
of ritual regulations probably were favorite pretexts 
for plucking the people. Hosea bitterly complains: 
*^ They feed on the sin of my people, and hunger after 
their iniquity." ' 

The second chapter of the first book of Samuel gives 
a graphic account of how the priests of Shiloh dis- 
regarded the customary regulations in order to satisfy 
their greed. "They cared not for Jahveh nor for what 
was the customary portion of the priest fronj the 
people.^ Whenever any one sacrificed, the servant of 

1 Ex. 34:20, 23. 2 cf. II Sam. 15:8. ' Hos. 4:8. 

* I Sam. 2: 13/. Most Biblical scholars favor this reading. 



RITUAL RELIGION REPUDIATED 295 

the priest came, while the flesh was still boiling, with a 
three-pronged fork in his hand; and he struck it into 
the kettle, or caldron, or pot; and whatever the fork 
brought up the priest took for himself. So they did in 
Shiloh unto all the Israelites that came thither. Even 
before they burned the fat the priest's servant came, 
and said to the man that sacrificed, * Give flesh to roast 
for the priest ; for he will not have boiled flesh of thee, 
but raw.* And, if the man replied, ' Surely the fat^ must 
be burned first, and thereafter thou mayest take what- 
ever thou pleasest,* then he would say, ' Nay, but thou 
shalt give it to me now; and if not, I will take it by 
force.*" 

Probably every sanctuary had originally its own 
regulations regarding the portion that belonged to the 
priests.^ The shewbread and cereal offerings seem to 
have been their portion from the earliest times. But 
the kinds of offerings which the priests might share 
increased in number as time went on, and they obtained 
also larger and larger portions for themselves. The 

* The fat was regarded as Jahveh's portion. The narrator evidently 
condemns the practice of the priests at Shiloh because a different custom 
prevailed in his time. But it is not at all improbable that he is here re- 
cording the survival of an old sacerdotal custom at Shiloh which may 
have been quite in accord with Canaanite law. In later times, at Jeru- 
salem, specified portions of the sacrifice belonged to the priest. Cf. Dt. 
18:3; Lev. 7:34. 

2 Contrary to probability and analogy is the statement of Wellhausen 
{Prolegomena, 6th ed., p. 147) that the priest, when there was one, was 
allowed to participate in some way in the sacrificial meal, but that he 
does not seem to have had a legitimate claim to specified perquisites of 
meat. The proper reading of I Sam. 2 : 12, 13, according to the Greek and 
Syriac versions is, "The sons of Eli . . . respected not Jahveh nor the 
right of the priest from the people." This shows that something was due 
to the priest from the sacrificer. 



296 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

question to what extent a serious, though mistaken, 
religious purpose may have been behind the priest- 
hood's growing demands for dignity and emoluments 
cannot concern us here. What does concern us is the 
fact that their maintenance came increasingly from the 
sacrificial system, and that the prophets charge them 
with abuse of this prerogative. 

The Deuteronomist, we may assume, merely formu- 
lated what was substantially ancient practice, when he 
said that the priests "shall eat the fire-offerings of 
Jahveh and his inheritance. . . . This shall be the 
priests' due from the people, from them that offer a 
sacrifice, whether it be of ox or sheep, that they shall 
give unto the priest the shoulder and the two cheeks 
and the maw. The first-fruits of thy grain, of thy new 
wine, and of thine oil, and the first of the fleece of thy 
sheep, shalt thou give to him."^ Ezekiel, himself a 
priest, expressly included among the sacerdotal per- 
quisites the meal offering, sin offering, trespass offer- 
ing, and everything that had been put under the ban.^ 

At a later period the Priests' Code greatly increased 
these requirements by specifying as the Levites' and 
priests' portion, the tithes, and the breast and the right 
hind leg of all sacrificial victims f in order to make sure 
of this as an addition to the Deuteronomic requirement, 
the latter was explained as referring to the priests' 
share of all secular slaughter of animals for food. The 
tendency in all this is revealed by the ultimate exten- 

» Dt. 18:3, 4 * Ezek. 44:29, 30. ' Lev. 7:31-34- 



RITUAL RELIGION REPUDIATED 297 

sion of sacerdotal demands beyond all reasonable 
possibility of realization, as when the latest additions 
of P provide for the imposition of an additional tithe 
upon flocks and herds, and assign to the hierarchy 
forty-eight cities with a girdle of pasture-lands half 
a mile in diameter around each one.^ "And Jahveh 
spake unto Moses'* is the pious form in which these 
ritual exactions are levied. 

^ The priestly revenues, therefore, amounted in later 
times, at least, to a very considerable tax upon the 
people, levied by means of the sacrificial system. In 
asserting that God himself instituted the system, and 
that his favor was dependent upon the scrupulous 
observance of the ritual ordinances, the priesthood was 
at the same time enforcing its claims to material sup- 
port with the alleged authority of a divine command. 
The prophets who had denied that God had insti- 
tuted sacrifices, or could be propitiated by means of 
them, were condemning an economic abuse as well as a 
religious superstition. These uncompromising preach- 
ers of morality were at the same time undermining the 
authority of the priests and allied false prophets to rob 
the people in the name of God. "If they have any- 
thing to bite, they proclaim prosperity; but they 
declare holy war against any one who does not put 
something into their mouths." 2 So Micah character- 
izes those of his own day. Sacerdotal greed had seen its 
advantage and was pushing it farther by all the means 

1 Lev. 27 : 32 and Num. 35:1-8. 2 Micah 3 : 5 ; cf . 3 : 4. 



298 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

in its power, chief among them being the profitable 
delusion that sacrifices possess the magic efficacy of 
atoning for sin, and securing prosperity. By calling a 
halt upon the propagation of this doctrine, men like 
Amos, Isaiah, Micah, and Jeremiah aroused the lasting 
hatred of the priests and professional prophets — a 
hatred inspired as much by the bread-instinct as by 
differences of theological belief. 

Although Amos had denounced sacrifices as worth- 
less, Amaziah the priest of Bethel assumes that he, 
like himself, "eats bread" obtained through the sys- 
tem. "O thou seer," said he, "flee thou away into the 
land of Judah, and there eat bread, and prophecy 
there." But the prophet resents the implication that 
he is a beneficiary of the sacrifices he has denounced; 
that he is pulling down his own roof- tree. "I am no 
[professional] prophet," he replies, "neither am I a 
member of a prophet's guild ; but I am a herdsman, and 
a dresser of sycomore trees." His moral convictions 
are untainted by fear or self-interest. He is independ- 
ent of the priestly sources of support. 

But it will be granted that, however bad the abuses 
of the system may have been, there was something to 
be said for its retention provided it could be purified 
and ethicized. Then it might continue to cheer the 
lives of the common people who wished to "rejoice 
before Jahveh" at the stated sacrificial feasts, and it 
would continue to provide sustenance for the official 
representatives of religion who were at the same time 



RITUAL RELIGION REPUDIATED 299 

the ministers of justice.^ May it not have been con- 
siderations like these that brought about the com- 
promise between prophetic and priestly ideals by which 
sacrifice found a place in Deuteronomy? 

By restricting the cultus to the sanctuary at Jerusa- 
lem the Deuteronomist made it possible and necessary 
to deprive the slaughter of animals for food of its sacri- 
ficial significance. The great reduction of sacrifices 
which this involved meant a corresponding reduction 
of opportunities for the exaction of priestly perquisites. 
The central sanctuary was given the monopoly of 
priestly revenues, out of which, however, all the dis- 
possessed priests of the abolished sanctuaries were to 
'*have like portions to eat."^ This latter provision, 
being in the nature of a check upon the priests at 

* The prospective removal of the priests from the local sanctuaries to 
Jerusalem requires new provision for the administration of justice in the 
provinces. Hence D provides for the appointment of judges and notaries 
(Dt. 16: 18) to be chosen doubtless from among the "elders" of the cit- 
ies and country communities (Dt. 19:12; Ex. 18). But difficult cases 
are still to be adjudicated by the priests at Jerusalem (Dt. 17:8 ff.). 
This explains why Dt. 19: 15-21, mentions the presence of judges, but 
lets the priests discharge the judicial functions. The mention of "the 
judge" in Dt. 17:9, 12, is shown to be a gloss by its position in the text. 
Cf. Marti, HSAT, p. 269. 

2 Cf . Dt. 18:8. This of course refers to the dues received by the priests 
from the people. According to II Kings 23:9, the dispossessed priests 
were, in spite of Deuteronomy, not permitted to officiate at Jerusalem. 
The priests of the latter sanctuary, forming a more or less close corpora- 
tion, refused to share their privileges. The statement that "the priests 
of the high places" were permitted a livelihood of "unleavened bread" 
indicates that they were excluded from all but an insignificant share in 
the altar dues. Since Plater (Num. 18: 19-20; 18:21 /.) assigns the altar 
dues to the Jerusalem priesthood alone, as distinct from the others who 
now appear merely as "Levites" under the distinction introduced by 
Ezekiel, we may safely assume that P gives the ex post facto recognition 
of a practice that arose immediately after Josiah's reformation. 



300 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

Jerusalem and promptly disregarded by them, is best 
explained as of prophetic origin. Its purpose was to 
preserve a livelihood for a large and important class of 
persons in the community. "The Levite that is within 
thy gates, thou shalt not forsake him," ^ is the burden 
of the Deuteronomist's plea. Strange that what was 
asked in charity for the entire clergy of Israel, was 
promptly appropriated and enlarged as a legal claim 
by the local priesthood of the chosen sanctuary! 
Ezekiel's move to unfrock the priests from the country 
sanctuaries does not look well in this connection. It 
disposed of unwelcome competitors. 

The retention of the sacrificial ritual in Deuteron- 
omy, may, therefore, be explained on the basis of the 
humanitarian reasons set forth above. The Deuteron- 
omist^s failure to attach any atoning value to sacrifice 
as such then becomes especially significant. The omis- 
sion is strong evidence of the prophetic point of view 
in Deuteronomy. The repudiation of sacrifice as a 
divine institution involves repudiation of the theory of 
atonement hy sacrifice. Let any one compare the ritual 
portions of Deuteronomy and Leviticus and note the 
gulf that yawns between their respective conceptions 
of sacrifice. The former, reflecting the ethical stand- 
ards of the prophets in its solicitude for the welfare of 
certain classes of the Hebrew community, makes good 

1 Dt. 14 : 27. The Deuteronomist's solicitude on behalf of the "Levite " 
need not indicate that priests were classed among the poor, but rather a 
desire to lighten the economic blow which disestablishment will deal 
them. Possessors of "patrimony " (Dt. 18:8) are not to be reckoned poor. 



RITUAL RELIGION REPUDIATED 301 

works the condition of favor with God, whereas the 
latter substitutes a system of sacrificial fines and the 
magic mummery of a supposedly "holy" ritual. But 
it must be admitted that the very act of providing for 
a reform of the cultus appeared to attach to the sacri- 
ficial system more than social-economic importance. 
Interested circles immediately drew the inference that 
the cultus was the vital thing in religion. The incipient 
rift between prophetic and priestly religion bridged tem- 
porarily by Deuteronomy, soon widened into a chasm. 

How Deuteronomy was wrested to serve the pur- 
poses of the sacerdotal party at Jerusalen and how 
Jeremiah resisted the legalism which it set on foot is 
best told in another connection. It must suffice to call 
attention here only to his utter repudiation of sacrifice 
as a valid religious function. It was in him that the 
free moral spirit of the pre-exilic prophets made its last 
determined stand against the bondage of ritual forms 
and a written law. 

Nothing reveals more clearly the strength of the 
rising sacerdotalism opposed to Jeremiah than the 
writings of his contemporary Ezekiel. In him one 
observes a return to earlier and cruder views of religion 
in which ceremonial plays the leading part. But the 
simple cult of earlier days Is now subjected to a ritual 
finesse which only the priest can exercise at one specified 
place, and the worshipper Is led to believe that 
scrupulous compliance with ritual requirements Is 
necessary to secure and preserve a state of "holiness.*' 



302 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

It is not surprising, therefore, that Ezekiel in his 
programme of restoration re-attaches to sacrifice the 
false importance which his illustrious predecessors had 
denied and denounced. Priestly privileges and ritual 
acts occupy the foreground in his thoughts of reform. 
Where Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Jeremiah had made 
purity of life the primary religious requirement, Eze- 
kiel so exaggerates Jahveh's interest in the correct 
performance of the ritual that ethical considerations 
become markedly secondary. His introduction of a dis- 
tinction between **the Levites that went far from me" 
and ''the priests the Levites, the sons of Zadok," of 
whom he was one, had the double effect of making the 
latter the sole custodians of the sacrificial ritual and 
the exclusive recipients of the priestly revenues. This 
act constitutes a transgression both of the letter and 
of the spirit of Deuteronomy, and shows how lightly 
the Zadokite priesthood regarded the authority of 
the new law when it did not minister to their own 
interests. 

We have seen that the abolition of all sanctuaries of 
Jahveh outside of Jerusalem necessarily involved a dis- 
tinction between the priests of the proscribed sanctua- 
ries, who lost their livelihood, and those who were at- 
tached to the chosen sanctuary. The Deuteronomist 
tacitly credits them all with equal claims to support by 
the sacrificial revenues, and so provides for the equal 
maintenance of all at the central sanctuary. But the 
brief interval between 621 and 586 B.C. was sufficient 



RITUAL RELIGION REPUDIATED 303 

to prove the centralization of the entire Judean priest- 
hood impracticable under the conditions set forth by 
Deuteronomy. The priests at Jerusalem refused to 
admit the evicted priests to a share in their enhanced 
importance and privileges. Ezekiel adds injustice to 
injury by proposing in his programme of restoration 
that the latter shall be degraded to the menial services 
of the new temple as a penalty for not having observed 
the D enter onomic law of the one sanctuary. This attempt 
to make out a case against unwelcome competitors, it 
should be observed, rests upon the false assumption 
that the Deuteronomic law of the one sanctuary was 
actually promulgated by Moses, and that it had been 
obeyed only by the priests at Jerusalem. 

But how could Moses lay down a law requiring the 
Israelites to worship at only one sanctuary when they 
settled in Palestine, and at the same time make pro- 
vision for the victims of its enforcement six hundred 
years later? The fact that Deuteronomy presupposes 
the existence of numerous illegitimate sanctuaries^ of 
Jahveh in Palestine, an inconceivable assumption for 
the time of Moses, when not even the one legitimate 
sanctuary had been chosen, naively betrays the real 
period and purpose of the writer. The provision for the 
sale of the evicted priests* patrimony pending their 

1 Local sanctuaries of Jahveh, among others, are meant by "the 
places where the nations . . . served their gods" (Dt. 12:2). The many 
local shrines. Bethel, Gibeon, Shechem, etc., mentioned in the historical 
books are here presented as heathenish. But down to the time of Josiah 
they were frequented as perfectly legitimate shrines of Jahveh under the 
rule laid down in Ex. 20: 24. 



304 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

removal to ''the place which Jahveh . . . shall choose," 
and the concession of their right of maintenance there, 
were not born of a desire to punish a neglect, but to 
indemnify for an innovation. What is more, the social 
and religious conditions presupposed by this com- 
pensatory legislation are not those of the time of Moses, 
but of a much later age. In the light of these facts it is 
deeply significant that Deuteronomy regards as victims 
of a reform those whom Ezekiel treats as offenders 
against a law. 

There can be no doubt that Ezekiel violates the facts 
of history as well as the spirit of Deuteronomy when he 
penalizes and brands with reproach "the Levites that 
went far from me [Jahveh]."^ That he does it know- 
ingly cannot be asserted. Nevertheless interesting 
questions are raised by the fact that this unjust judg- 
ment, supported by an appeal to a fictitious construc- 
tion of history, is introduced by "Thus saith the Lord 
Jahveh. "2 What is equally unjustifiable, he and his 
colleagues of the Jerusalem priesthood claim quite un- 
deserved credit for conformity with a law which, when 
enacted, found them connected with the sanctuary at 
Jerusalem just as other priests happened to be attached 
to other sanctuaries. With equal propriety might a 
man claim credit for having been born white when he 
finds himself amid surroundings where it is a disad- 
vantage to be black. Before 621 B.C. it was nothing 
praiseworthy to be connected with the Jerusalem sanc- 

* Ezek. 44:10/. 2E2ek. 44:9. 



RITUAL RELIGION REPUDIATED 305 

tuary ; neither was it a punishable offence to officiate at 
some other "high place." 

For purposes of illustration let us imagine a roughly 
analogous case. Suppose a law were passed in a given 
State providing that no man shall be entitled to prac- 
tise medicine unless his degree has been conferred by 
the State university. To compensate for the hardship 
which this would work upon practising holders of 
degrees from other schools, the law provides that such 
practitioners shall receive appointments in connection 
with a great hospital supported by the State. Although 
the newcomers are to enjoy the same rights and per- 
quisites as the doctors already there, friction arises 
between them. The latter refuse to concede to the 
former an equality of privileges and their share of the 
perquisites. 

After a lapse of forty-five years, during which nearly 
all who were originally affected by the change have 
died, a great political catastrophe ensues, involving 
the destruction of the hospital. Anticipating its 
ultimate reestablishment, one of the university-bred 
doctors proposes that under the terms of reorganiza- 
tion all who do not hold a medical degree from the 
university, and their descendants, shall henceforward 
not be permitted to rise above the rank and work of 
nurses. The reason he gives for this arbitrary procedure 
is that they failed to comply with the law which pro- 
vides that only medical graduates of the State uni- 
versity shall practise medicine. He ignores the fact 



306 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

that since they obtained their medical education before 
the law was enacted their choice could not justly be 
judged by it. Their misfortune, recognized by com- 
pensation in the original law, is under the new con- 
struction penalized as a misdemeanor, and the bene- 
ficiaries of the law make a virtue of the accident that 
found them university-bred when the law was passed. 

There is no good reason for impugning the motives 
of Ezekiel, but his conception of religion in this respect 
is fundamentally false. It involves reassertion of the 
intrinsic value of sacrifices, long ago denied by the 
greater pre-exilic prophets. He claims divine authority 
for what they had vehemently denounced by the same 
token. For when he alleges a **Thus saith the Lord" 
for the exclusion of the ^'Levites" from the higher 
ritual functions and makes Jahveh say that Zadokite 
priests alone "shall stand before me to offer unto me 
the fat and the blood," he implies on the part of God a 
vital interest in sacrifice and ceremonial. In so far, at 
least, he degraded the conception of God set forth by 
Jeremiah and his predecessors, and initiated that 
priestly misdevelopment of Hebrew religion which 
became completely dominant under Ezra, and later 
proved a serious obstacle in the path of Jesus. 

One may fitly make the point, also, that the above- 
mentioned religious ideals of Ezekiel are morally dis- 
credited by the means he employed to realize them. 
Sincerity alone does not make right. There doubtless 
were many besides Ezekiel in the growing priestly 



RITUAL RELIGION REPUDIATED 307 

party who sincerely believed that Israel's political 
downfall was a divine punishment for failure to con- 
fine worship to one sanctuary and to guard the "holi- 
ness," i.e., ceremonial purity, of the ritual and the 
temple. It lay in the nature of the Deuteronomic 
reform, and the importance it attached to legitimacy 
of place and ritual, to foster such views. But the fact 
remains that Ezekiel indicted and penalized the 
*'Levites" on a charge framed out of a historical fic- 
tion ; that their degradation to menial rank enhanced 
the power and income of the Zadokite priesthood ; and 
that he gave a set-back to the best prophetic traditions 
by depicting Jahveh as a jealous guardian of the sanc- 
tity of the sacrificial cult. By uniting a false view of 
Hebrew history with a misconception of the essential 
elements of Hebrew religion he conjured up, in this 
view of sacrifice, an idea of God which, however true 
he may have believed it to be, was profoundly and 
banefully erroneous. 

If this judgment seems harsh, it is necessary only to 
point to the evils of legalism and Levitical formalism 
which, for centuries, found their stronghold in his 
thought, and filled with bitter conflict the days of 
Jesus. Fortunately there were other aspects of his 
activity that were more admirable. But we must post- 
pone to a later volume a complete consideration of his 
work and that of the great leaders whose beacon- 
fires lit up the troubled times between Cyrus and 
Augustus. 



308 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

We have now reached that great crisis in Israel's 
history and religion which was brought about by the 
destruction of Jerusalem and by the Babylonian exile. 
A new environment, new social forces, new ideas, a re- 
valuation of the past, a re-furnishment of the future 
with the lure of more spiritual ideals — all these bring 
about the dissolution of the old order. But the great 
prophetic ideas lived on and became the dynamic of a 
new order. 

If we have succeeded at all in giving the reader an 
idea of the great development of ideas and customs in 
Israel during the centuries that lie between Samuel and 
the exile, it is not necessary to point out that the dog- 
matic view of the Bible, quoted at the beginning of the 
volume, is impaired beyond recovery. In the face of 
such evidence the assertion that "the Scriptures of the 
Old and New Testaments are without error or mis- 
statement in their moral and spiritual teachings and 
record of historical facts," is to create that serious 
situation in which faith and truth part company. 

However, the faith which is abandoned on these 
terms is no longer faith, but superstition. What is 
more, it is a very harmful superstition, for in the minds 
of many it creates the mistaken impression that they 
must choose between their religious faith and their 
loyalty to the truth. The saddest aspect of the matter 
is that armies of young people, trained in schools and 
colleges to think true to evidence, resolve the fictitious 



RITUAL RELIGION REPUDIATED 309 

dilemma in favor of unbelief. And yet their choice is 
a moral choice, because they prefer truth to dogma. 
Their loss to the Church is the penalty which must j 
be paid for the defence of truth by untruth. 

There is nothing in the spiritual history of mankind 
that is comparable to the passion for righteousness 
which the Bible represents in the true progress of the 
world. The new interest which historical criticism is 
arousing in its study may be the means of freeing it 
from the abuses of ignorance and superstition, that it 
may, under God, serve the new age even better than 
the past. And those who are dreading the new light ^ 
will find, as thousands have already found, that textual 
and historical criticism take their charter from Christ 
himself, and are only instruments for the furtherance 
of his mission. 

Bible study on the factual and historical side has 
become a science and has taken its place in the brother- 
hood of sciences. For though on the surface they differ 
as the waves, in the depths they are one as the sea. 
In every department of knowledge the wide-awake 
student hears ^Meep calling unto deep": **A11 things 
are yours, whether Paul or Apollos, or Cephas or the 
world, or life or death, or things present or things to 
come ; all are yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is 
God's." 

Will men in face of the tremendous, thrilling sweep 
of development, which we have tried to delineate, go 
on teaching the Old Testament in the foolish patch- 



310 THE OLD TESTAMENT 

work way of four square inclies here and four square 

inches there? Without recognition of the gradual 

growth of moral standards? Without recognition of 

Hebrew methods of historiography by which literary 

documents dating centuries apart were interwoven or 

placed side by side in contiguous chapters? Without 

historical criticism of conflicting sets of facts? Without 

the slightest attempt to interpret folk-lore as folk-lore, 

and each form of literature in accordance with the 

demands of its type? Will they, like amiable tourists 

of religion, continue to carry home bottles from the 

Jordan, when full rivers of knowledge, eager to shape 

new channels and refresh a virgin soil, are rolling for 

the baptism of eager-eyed new generations? The 

better, larger day must come to gladden the eyes of 

those 

"... who, rowing hard upstream, 
See distant gates of Eden gleam, 
And do not deem it all a dream.'* 



THE END 



APPENDIX 



APPENDIX A 
"JEHOVAH" AND "JAHVEH" 

The name "Jehovah" is a word of recent origin. 
It was quite unknown in antiquity. As G. F. Moore 
has shown (OTSS, i), it occurs for the first time 
sporadically in the fourteenth century. After the 
appearance of Petrus Galatinus' De arcanis, in 1 518, its 
use became general. The word arose in a peculiar way. 
Until some centuries after the Christian era, the text 
of the Hebrew Scriptures was written with consonants 
only. The name of the deity, therefore, was written 
with the four consonants ** JHVH." As Hebrew ceased 
to be a spoken tongue, words written consonantally 
began to present difficulties to readers. This fact led 
to the invention of systems of vowel points which were 
written under and above the consonants. 

Long before the invention of vowel points it had 
become customary, on account of superstitious dread 
of the name of the deity, to read **Adonay" (Lord) 
wherever *'JHVH" occurred. To indicate this fact 
the vowels of Adonay were connected with the con- 
sonants "JHVH," the short "A" of "Adonay" by a 
regular change becoming "e" when connected with 
the consonant J. Persons ignorant of the purpose of 
the vowels began to read them with the consonants 
and thus the preposterous hybrid "JeHoVaH" arose. 



314 APPENDIX 

To illustrate what happened, let us suppose that the 
English language had formerly been written only with 
consonants, and that the name of London, conse- 
quently, appeared as '^LNDN." Let us suppose fur- 
ther that the name became taboo, and that it was 
customary to read in its place the word ** capital.** 
To indicate this to the reader the vowels of the word 
C'o," "z,** "a,**) were associated with ^'LNDN,*' 
after vowels began to be employed. But persons came 
along who did not know this fact, and who, by stuf- 
fing the skin of the word ** London** with the 
bones of the word ** capital," produced the monstros- 
ity **LaNiDaN.** Since the name ** Jehovah** is an 
equally absurd misadventure, there is no reason why 
it should be perpetuated any longer, especially since 
we now know with practical certainty that the word 
was pronounced *' Jahveh,** and was sometimes short- 
ened to ^'Jahu,** and ''Jah.** 

The meaning of the name is of little consequence, 
for even if its original significance could be ascer- 
tained, it would bear testimony not to the beginnings 
of Israel's religion, but to a much more primitive 
period of Semitic religion in general. Therefore, the 
search for etymological origins of "El,** "Elohim,** 
*'E1 Shaddai,'* and "Jahveh** is a negligible matter 
in this connection. The possession of any name for the 
deity is now a hindrance rather than a help. 



APPENDIX B 
DUHM ON JER. 8:8 (p. 262) 

Duhm's comment on Jer. 8 : 8, is so illuminating that 
I venture to give a translation of the main portion :i 
''The word sopheriniy scribes, . . . does not in any 
case denote mere copyists in this connection, but 
authors, men of the book, such as reduce the Torah 
[law] to writing, or concern themselves with written 
Torah. But this wonderfully wise, new law must be 
connected in some way with Deuteronomy ; is with one 
reservation to be regarded as identical with it. A res- 
ervation is necessary because we are not at all in- 
formed about the precise appearance of Deuteronomy 
at the time when Jeremiah wrote these strophes; be- 
cause we do not know to what extent its contents 
coincided with the book that we possess to-day. For 
our Deuteronomy, it must be remembered, is not a 
book of one piece; some parts of its present contents 
were not added until after the time of Jeremiah; other 
parts may subsequently have been rejected, and among 
them, perhaps, just such parts as may have occasioned 
Jeremiah's caustic utterance about the lying pen of the 
scribes. One must leave room, of course, for the possi- 
bility that Jeremiah here enters protest against some 
Deuteronomic productions and contentions which are 

* Das Buck Jeremia, pp. 88-89. 



3i6 APPENDIX 

still to be read in Deuteronomy or outside of it. The 
bookmen, as we know, soon engaged in the task of 
dragging other books into the circle of their redactional 
activity in order to provide them with their additions. 
That old mirror of justice, for instance, which we now 
find in Ex. 20 : 23 — 23 : 33, Jeremiah may still have 
known in its original condition, and may have seen 
personally how these bibliographers incorporated it 
into their own productions and turned it into a law 
given at Mount Sinai. Furthermore, being the son 
of a priest and conversant with earlier conditions, he 
could not be ignorant of the fact that the Deuterono- 
mists, as soon as they had transferred their theory of 
the cultus and of the single sanctuary to ancient times, 
did violence to the latter by indiscriminately placing 
under the ban things both good and bad, and hoary 
customs hallowed by the names of the patriarchs and 
the great prophets of former days. One point, in par- 
ticular, ... is worthy of emphasis. Even before Deu- 
teronomy made its appearance, Jeremiah had made 
war, in the spirit of the older prophets, against the 
thoroughly degraded cults of the local sanctuaries. 
But he nowhere expressed the opinion that Jahveh had 
forbidden worship at the local sanctuaries as such, or 
had commanded the offering of worship at the temple 
only. What kind of an impression must it have made 
upon him when Deuteronomy suddenly appeared? 
Did he see in it, without reservation, the word of 
Jahveh? The messengers of the King did not apply to 



APPENDIX 317 

Jeremiah when they were looking for a prophetic en- 
dorsement of the divine character of the new book! 
And how extraordinarily rarely Jeremiah mentions the 
book or the reformation! Were it not for this passage 
one might suppose, either that he had known nothing 
about it, or that he had purposely ignored it. Besides, 
this single reference is a hostile one. There is only one 
explanation for this: the idea that the cults practiced 
at the local sanctuaries were alienating men from the 
religion of Jahveh had been abroad for a long time. 
The literary prophets of the eighth century had 
strongly expressed their conviction on that point, and 
Jeremiah as a young man was deeply imbued with the 
same idea. In any case Amos, Isaiah, and others of the 
prophetic succession, did not look upon the sacrificial 
system with any more favor than Jeremiah. They be- 
lieved that the people would either have to return to 
Jahveh through an inward reform, or he would dash 
them to utter destruction. Now some men came for- 
ward with a law which had for its object the forcible 
abolishment of the local cults and the institution of the 
sacrificial cultus in their stead at the temple. They 
remained anonymous, and, perhaps because they were 
familiar with the views of Jeremiah, Uriah, and some 
kindred minds, they took refuge behind the mighty 
authority of Moses. To all appearance they aimed at 
the same thing as Jeremiah, namely the purification of 
the religion of Jahveh. But they actually were men of 
a very different stamp. Whereas Jeremiah understood 



3i8 APPENDIX 

by the mishpat Jahveh [law of Jahveh] the supreme 
authority of morality, they soon arrived at a system of 
mishpatim [ordinances] which in part had a very differ- 
ent purpose, namely to serve as precepts for the 
regulation, of the sacrificial ritual. Was that anything 
essentially new? Could a man like Jeremiah see in that 
an adequate remedy for the hurt of his time? Was not 
that a * sowing among the thorns'? Marti may have 
gone a little too far in maintaining that Jeremiah was 
no adherent of the Deuteronomic reform, but in the 
last analysis he is right. Jeremiah lives in another 
world, and is informed by a spirit very different from 
that of these theologians. He can only characterize it 
as a falsehood when these 'wise men' rave about the 
saving value of the * temple of Jahveh ' — perhaps even 
connecting the safety of the nation with the vessels of 
the temple (28 : 3) — and declare that since the achieve- 
ment of the reform, ' peace ' may be expected of Jahveh. 
But Jahveh himself had vouchsafed to Jeremiah a 
glimpse of the dark future. The putting to sleep of the 
conscience of the people was to him a more grievous 
falsification than all the violence done to Hebrew 
history by Deuteronomic pens." 



INDEXES 



INDEX OF SCRIPTURE CITATIONS 



GENESIS 

4:14 62,144 

4-15 41 

4:24 41 

4:26 103 

5:29 32 

6:6 64 

6:12 83 

9:5 40 

11:5 64 

12:10 72 

14:7 35 

18:14 64 

18:21 64 

18:25 84 

20:1-18 72 

20:7 57 

21:17 59 

22:11-15 59 

31:49 76 

31:19-30 98 

EXODUS 

3:14 103 

6:3 103 

11:2 73 

11:1-13 124 

12:35-36 73 

19:11-20 59 

21:7-11 51. 114 

22:18-20 80 

23:1 125 

24:3-8 76 

24:7 77 

24:10 59 

32:4 200 

32:9-14 70 

33:5 70 

34:5 59 

34:7 47 

34:20 lOI 

34:24 127 

34:28 91 

LEVITICUS 

19:20 52 

24:16 104 

27:32 297 



NUMBERS 

10:35-36 36 

21:8 99 

21:14 69 

35:1-8 297 

DEUTERONOMY 

4:12 100 

5:22 93 

6:4 97 

6:10-15 191 

7:16 235 

9:20-21 44 

12:29 196 

13:15 117 

14:27 300 

18:3-4 296 

19:16-17 126 

21:1-9 288 

21:15 112, 247 

21:18-21 113 

22:23-24 119 

23:9-14 • 256 

23:18 198 

24:16 48,238 

26:14 122 

28:43 233 

JOSHUA 

6:17-24 117 

9:23 ■•• 224 

19:14.27 35 

JUDGES 

2:10 38 

9:23 67 

17:1-13 98 

I SAMUEL 
1 : 19-22 56 

4:7 36 

6:9 62 

6:19-20 80 

8:20 55 

14:6 64 

15:33 117 

16:10 67 



322 INDEX OF SCRIPTURE CITATIONS 



19:9 98 

26:19 62, 67, 144 

II SAMUEL 

3:13-15 120 

6:2,5, 16 36 

6:7-9 66 

6:8 68 

21:9 118 

I KINGS 

2:10 38 

18:23 lOI 

20:28 35 

II KINGS 

3:27 59 

4:22 107 

5:17 63 

11:4 107 

17:24,28 63 

PSALMS 

6:5 61 

50:7-15 287 

PROVERBS 

4:1 114 

23:13 114 

29:17 114 

ISAIAH 
1:13 108 

1:15 185 

2:10-19 181 

3:8-15 182 

5:16 178 

5:18 180 

6:3 169 

6:9-10 174 

7:4-9 183 

18:4 183 

22:2 185 

22:12-14 i75» 186 

29:13 180 

30:9 184 

30:15 184 

38:18-19 61 



JEREMIAH 



2:2 . . . 
6:20 . . 

7:4-7. 
7:8-11 



41 
272 
265 
266 



12-15 
21-22 
8-9.. 
4.... 
19-20 
11-15 
33 ... 



266 
272 
262 

75 
274 
267 
278 



EZEKIEL 



44:10/. 304 

HOSEA 

1:4 165 

2:11 108 

2:14-15 ^..... 44 

3:4 98 

4:1 155 

4:8 294 

6:6- 155 

6:16, 17, 20 285 

8:11-13 284 

9:4 292 

10:12 155*283 

13:7-8 l6o 

13:11 162 

AMOS 

1:3, 13 143 

3:10 142 

4:4 283 

5:14 150, 155 

5:21 153,281 

7:17 144 

9:2 145 

MICAH 

3:5 297 

3:11 205,263 

3:12 206 

6:6-8 287 

MATTHEW 

5:18 7 

5:21 131 

7:12 7 

22:37-40 7 

24:20 109 



MARK 



7:15 
2:27 



9 
no 



LUKE 
16:16 9 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS 



Aaron, as symbol, 216. 

Aaron's bull-image, 200. 

Abimelech, 72. 

Abraham's sacrifice, 197. 

Abraham stories, 72. 

Absalom, 246. 

Achan, 79. 

Adultery, 119-23, 251; detection 

of, 35- 
Aliens, treatment of, 230. 
Altar dues, 299. 
Amalekites, 241. 
Amarna letters, 78, 188. 
Ammonites, 237. 
Amos, and Amaziah, 298; and 

Hosea, 75 ; not a monotheist, 143 ; 

theodicy of, 134; writings of, 132. 
Amos's idea of good, 140. 
Ancestor worship, 37, 38, 122. 
Anti-alien feeling, 244. 
Ark, of Jahveh, 36, 200 ; condemned, 

272; ignored in D, 201. 
Ashera, 33. 
Assyrian cults, 211. 
Astral religion, 211, 217. 
Atonement, by blood, 288, 300; 

mechanical, 81 ; ritual, discarded, 

289. 
Authority, parental, 252; priestly, 

252. 

Baal, head of family, 37. 
Baalism, absorption of, 189. 
Bedawin, 24; religion of, 28. 
Beliefs, persistence of, 171. 
Blood, cleansing by, 288, 300. 
Blood-revenge, 40, 116. 
Bull-image, 199. 

"Calves, golden," 99, 199. 
Canaan, culture of, 190. 
Canaanite- Hebrew sanctuaries , 195. 
Captives, female, 243. 
Children, as property, 84, 113; il- 
legitimate, 240. 
Child sacrifice, 92, 196.] 
Cicero quoted, 71. 



Clean and unclean, 78, 81. 
Client, 226, 232. 
Concubinage, 50-53. 
Covenant, Book of the, 77. 
Covenant, new, 279; uses of, 75. 
Covetousness, 127. 
Creditors' rights, 232. 
Criticism, value of, 165, 309. 
Cultus and religion, 138. 
Custom and religion, 55. 

Dead, worship of the, 38, 61, 122. 

Death penalties, 251. 

Deborah, Song of, 18, 212. 

Debtors, 232. 

Decalogue, only for men, 94 ; origins, 
87-131 ; the moral, 95; the ritual, 
90. 

Decalogues, variant, 89, 93. 

Determinism, prophetic, 162, 174. 

Deuteronomy, abuse of, 207; char- 
acter of, 316; motives behind, 
207. 

Divorce, 49, 50. 

Ecstasy, prophetic, 171. 
Edomites, 236. 
Egyptians, 236. 
Elisha, 164, 171, 232, 245. 
Ethical quality of D, 234. 
Ethics, social, of D, 218. 
Eusebius quoted, 100. 
Evil (Amos), 141. 
Exclusivism of D, 234, 244. 
Expiation by sacrifice, 292. 
Expurgation of traditions, 21. 
Ezekiel, 276, 301 ; motives of, 306. 

Faith versus truth, 308. 

Family, Babylonian, 49; Hebrew, 

37, I II ; solidarity of, 46. 
Family institutions, 37. 
Farmers, 30. 

Father, authority of, 46, 11 1. 
Fellahin, 30. 
Feuds bequeathed, 237. 
Fines, sacrificial, 52, 294. 



324 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS 



First-born, privileges of, 45. 

First-born's rights, 247. 

First fruits, 190. 

Flood, moral aspect of, 83. 

"Food of his God," 287. 

Food taboos, 80. 

Fusion of Jahveh-Baal, 193, 215. 

Future life, 148. 

Ger, the, 226. 

Gibeonites, the, 224. 

Giving to Jahveh, 293. 

Glory of Jahveh, 180. 

God, immoral ideas of, l6l. 

God, in human terms, 159. 

Go'el, the, 40, 46. 

Goethe and the decalogue, 89. 

Golden calf, the, 99, 199. 

Good and evil (Amos), 141, 143. 

Group morality, 95, 123, 135, 230, 

277. 
Guilt, infective, 82. 

Half-nomads, 29. 

Hammurabi Code, 88, 226, 248. 

Hananiah, 277. 

Hatred of enemies, 238. 

Heaven, in J and E, 60. 

Heresy trial, first, 269. 

Hierodules, 198. 

Holiness (Isaiah), 176; moral, 178; 

moral versus ritual, 255. 
"Holy" (taboo), 79, 176. 
Homicide, 116. 
Hosea, 153; no monotheist, 163; 

on sacrifice, 283; versus Elisha, 

164. 
"Host of heaven," 211. 
Husband as haal, 37. 

Idolatry, penalty for, 253. 
Images, 98, 163; of Jahveh, 199. 
Immanence of God, 172. 
Individualism, 166, 278. 
Inspiration, prophetic, 171. 
Interest on loans, 231. 
Inviolability party, 205, 263. 
Isaac, sacrifice of, 197. 
Isaiah, 167; on sacrifice, 185, 284. 
Isaiah's call, 174. 

J and E documents, 19. 
Jacob's deception, 73, 229. 
Jahveh, and foreigners, 70; the 



avenger, 40; called Baal, 193; ca- 
pricious, 67; celestial, 59; guar- 
dian of customs, 140; intramun- 
dane, 56, 145; localized, 56, 62, 
70; moral limitations, 65; phy- 
sical limitations, 63; the name, 
313; taboo of the name, 102. 

Jahveh-Baal worship, 202, 

Jahveh's subordinates, 212, 217. 

Javhism, agricultural, 31. 

Jealousy of Jahveh, 162. 

"Jehovah," or Jahveh, 313. 

Jehu's revolt, 164. 

Jeremiah, and D, 261 ; monotheistic, 
274; on sacrifice, 271; personal 
history, 258; Book of, distorted, 
280. 

Judgments of Jahveh, 160. 

Justice, abuse of, 158; ancient, 41. 

Kadesh, 125. 

Kenites, 42. 

Kinship, patrilineal, 27. 

"Knowledge" of God, 155. 

Law, defined by Jesus, 7. 
Lecky quoted, 71. 
Legality and morality, 142. 
Levirate marriage, 38. 
Levites, 299, 302, 307. 
Loans, 230. 
Lot, sacred, 157. 
Love of Jahveh, 154. 
Lucan quoted, 74. 

Majesty of Jahveh, 180. 
Marital fidelity, 121. 
Marriage relation, 48. 
Marriage, stepmother, 247. 
Massah and Meribah, 36. 
Massebas, 29. 

Moabites (blood-feud), 237. 
Mohammed, 26, 250. 
Moloch (Molech), 197. 
Money, tainted, 198. 
Monojahvism, 187. 
Monotheism, 96, 213, 274. 
Monotheism (Amos), 143-47. 
Moon, full, as Sabbath, 106. 
Morality, of Amos, 150; double 

standard, 121; tribal, 71. 
Moses, and sacrifice, 271; religion 

of, 18. 
Motives, judgment of, 128, 142. 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS 



325 



Mountains, holy, 34. 

Murder, 116, 251; of slaves, 251. 

Naaman, 63. 
Names, dread of, 103. 
National-god-idea, 135, 235. 
Nazirites, 177; holiness of the, 177. 
Nethinim (slaves), 224. 
"No-gods," 215. 
Nomadic festivals, 39. 
Nomadic reactions, 42. 
Nomadism, 23. 
Nomads, 24. 
Nomad society, 27. 

Oracle, 293. 
Ordeals, 35. 
Orphans, 249. 
Orthodoxy, 264, 270. 

Parental blessings and curses, 45, 

115- 
Parents, sanctity of, 45. 
Particularism, 136; of D, 214, 217. 
Passover, 39. 

Patriarchs, the, as ideals, 71. 
Patrimony of priests, 303. 
Penalties, meaning of, 251. 
Pilgrim-feasts, 32, 282. 
Polydemonism, 33. 
Polygamy, 50. 
Polyjahvism, 202, 209. 
Portents, 133. 
Possession theory, 172. 
Priesthood, Jerusalem, 206, 217. 
Priestly monopoly, 299. 
Priests, depravity of, 157. 
Priests' portion, 294. 
Prophetism, development of, 172. 
Prophets, societies of, 170. 
Prophet, test of a, 267. 
Prostitutes, "holy," 197. 
Punishment, collective, 83. 
Punishments, divine, 148. 
Purity, ritual, 241, 281. 

Rechabites, 42. 

Reform, Josiah's, 317. 

Refuge, cities of, 117, 252. 

Religions, two, 286, 301. 

Responsibility, collective, 46, 47, 
82, 238. 

Retribution, ante-mortem, 152 ; com- 
munal, 149. 



Revelation, Hebrew idea of, 169. 
Revelation (Isaiah), 175. 
Revelation, modern idea of, 12. 
Revenue of priests, 296. 
Rewards, divine, 148. 
Righteousness (loyalty), 78. 
Righteousness, forensic, 84, 141, 

143- 
Rock (term for God), 34. 

Sabbath, Babylonian, 108; lunar 

feast, 108; the Hebrew, 104. 
Sacerdotalism, 301. 
Sacrifice, in D, 270, 290; Jeremiah 

on, 271 ; repudiated, 281 ; Semitic 

ideas of, 138, 
Saul, 69. 
Seduction, 245. 
"Seek Jahveh," 139. 
Serpent, the bronze, 99. 
Sex morality, 120. 
Shem<L, the, 97. 
Sheol, 60. 
Shiloh, 208, 266. 
Sinai-Horeb, 34. 
Sin, as disloyalty, 78 ; early ideas of, 

47, 81. 
Slander, 125. 

Slave, murder of a, 118, 251. 
Slavery, 221. 
Slaves, cannot witness, 125 ; female, 

51; foreign, 224; Hebrew, 222. 
Social ethics of D, 218. 
Solomon, 247. 
Springs, sacred, 35. 
Stealing, 123. 
Stones, sacred, 28, 33. 
"Strangers," 226; treatment of, 

28. 
Sun, eclipses of the, 133, 161. 
Survivals, 33, 37. 
Syncretism, 195. 

Taboo ("holy"), 79- 
Temple slaves, 224. 
Temple, the, no palladium, 206, 
264, 270. - 

Teraphim, 98. 
Tomb, family, 60. 
Torah,i57, 158. 
Traditions, use of, 22. 
Tranquillity, divine, 183. 
Transcendence of God, 172. 
Tree-cult, 33. 



^/f 



326 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS 



Trees, destruction of, 245. 
Trust in Jahveh, 183. 

Unity, rjl Jahveh, 210; of the Sanc- 
tuary, 208. 
Universalism, 97, 275. 
Uzzah, the death of, 66. 

Victims of progress, 248. 
Visions, 171. 
Viticulture, 32. 



Water, sacred, 35. 

Wells and springs, 30, 35. 

Widows, 249. 

Witchcraft, 80. 

Witness, false, 124. 

Women, as property, 37, 246; can- 
not witness, 125. 

Worship, centralized, 208, 2 16; of 
the dead, 38, 61, 122. 

Zadokite priests, 302. 
Zephaniah, 211. 



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